Without Prejudice

I. Zangwill's Without Prejudice is a dazzling, satirical miscellany of essays and reflections that ranges across art, society, politics, travel, science, marriage, and literary culture. It opens in mock-epic fashion with a narrator besieged by a vast chorus of women, then men, the poor, the neglected, and the wronged, each demanding an accounting for tyranny, hypocrisy, privilege, and social failure. What begins as comic self-defense expands into a moral trial of modern life, where every issue seems to implicate everyone. From there, Zangwill turns to the "vexed questions" of the age, piling up disputes about religion, law, education, journalism, empire, gender, etiquette, and civilization itself until the sheer abundance of opinion becomes the joke. He also offers a witty, skeptical meditation on love and marriage, exposing romantic clichés, questioning literary convention, and examining how passion is shaped by biology, money, family, and social expectation. Throughout, the book is playful, provocative, and sharply aware of the modern world's endless appetite for argument. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.