“The Oxford Circus” by Raymond Mortimer is a novel about Oxford and youth, originally by Alfred Budd. Its sparkling epigrams, and its vivid portrayal of life in many different strata of our modern society, seem almost unexpected from one who lived so quietly as Mr. Budd. Yet somehow his originality of invention leaves no room for doubt: Budd was perhaps the first novelist to introduce the London and North Western Railway station into a novel.