SOURCE: "'Piccadilly'," in The Life of Laurence Oliphant: Traveller, Diplomat and Mystic, Robert Hale Limited, 1956, pp. 124-42.

Philip Henderson was an English man of letters known for his studies of Christopher Marlowe and other English literary figures. In the following excerpt, he traces the development of Oliphant's satirical voice in Piccadilly, Oliphant's commentary on Victorian high society.

It was while writing for The Owl that Oliphant discovered the satirical gift he … employed to such good effect in Piccadilly. As a member of Lady Palmerston's Cambridge House circle, he had every opportunity for observing the manners of high Victorian society, and it is, in fact, to one of Lady Palmerston's Saturday night parties that Vanecourt goes at the opening of the novel. Lord Redesdale remembers meeting him there—"Laurence Oliphant, a mystic in lavender kid gloves, full of spiritualism, strange creeds, and skits upon Society", as he describes him...