 A collection of Beerbohm's essays from the 1890s written while he was still a student at Oxford and which had originally been printed in "The Yellow Book", "The Savoy", "The Pageant", "The Chap Book", and other notable periodicals, the book was published in London by John Lane at The Bodley Head in 1896, and launched Beerbohm's career as an essayist.The book contains Beerbohm's notorious essay "A Defence of Cosmetics", which had appeared in the first number of "The Yellow Book" in April 1894, revised and renamed "The Pervasion of Rouge".