So cleverly and wittily are the stories told that we sense we belong in the charmed cafe society of post-1918 Britain, and life seems, as Ernest Jones says in his critical introduction, a Nirvana in which homosexuals are the ultimate chic and in which… almost everyone turns out to be at least bi-sexual. In Vainglory, Mrs. Shamefoot, who almost compels a tear, embraces the quest for a cathedral stained-glass window that should be a miracle of violet glass. InInclinations, Miss Brookomore, filled with longing for her companion, the sunny Miss Mabel Collins, travels to Greece where Mabel, rather treacherously, acquires a husband and baby. And in Caprice, Miss Sinquier flees her rural parents and the comfort of her black slippers ( all over little pearls with filigree butterflies that trembled above her toes ) to pursue an acting career in bohemian London. To quote Mrs. Shamefoot describing a novelist clearly meant to be Firbank: He has such a strange, peculiar style. His work calls to mind a frieze with figures of varying heights trotting all the same way. If one should by chance turn about it’s usually merely to stare or to sneer or to make a grimace. Only occasionally his figures care to beckon. And they seldom really touch. Originally published in 1951, Three More Novels by Ronald Firbank is now reissued as a New Directions Paperbook.