Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (18631–1944), who often published under the pen-name of 'Q', was one of the giants of early twentieth-century literature and literary criticism. A novelist and poet who was also a Professor of English, he helped to form the literary tastes of generations of literary students and scholars who came after him. The freshness, enthusiasm and intellectual insight of his work is still evident in his writings nearly a century on. Cambridge University Press is delighted to reissue some of his key texts in this new edition. Taken from a series of articles for the Pall Mall magazine, this month-by-month series of observations on life and thought shows, in Quiller-Couch's own words, 'that beneath some apparent and purposed frivolities ... the author, from month to month, writing casually, had a sense of the beauty and seriousness of life as well as of its humours'.