An intellectual summer party at an English country house is satirized with “ingenuity, sophistication [and] impudence” by the author of A Brave New World (H. L. Mencken). When young poet Denis Stone is invited to a party at Crome, country home of Priscilla and Henry Wimbush, he is eager to join their coterie of authors and intellectuals. The Wimbushes are famous for gathering stimulating company for extended stays. But between the philosophizing and witty repartee, drunken reveries and amorous adventures are also afoot. Denis is secretly in love with his hosts’ niece Anne Wimbush. Anne, however, seems more interested in an artist named Gombauld. Meanwhile, a naïve flapper is determined to overcome her sexual repressions, Priscilla finds a kindred spirit in her fascination with occultism, and a solitary young woman records her devastating observations in a journal.
