Max Beerbohm

For more information on Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, visit Britannica.com.

(b London, 24 Aug 1872; d Rapallo, 20 May 1956). English caricaturist and writer. He was educated at Charterhouse and Merton College, Oxford, and in the 1890s showed precocious gifts of observant figure sketching. His usual style of single-figure caricatures on formalized groupings, drawn in pen or pencil with delicately applied watercolour tinting, was established by the time he came of age and flourished until c. 1930. In contrast to the narrative jocosities of the Punch tradition he showed a lightness of touch and simplicity of line that owed more to the traditions of the literary epigram than to any overall accomplishment in draughtsmanship. The influence of French cartoonists, such as those the pseudonymous 'Sem' (Georges Grousset) and 'Caran d'Ache' (Emmanuel Poir?), was more important than a by-then stale English tradition of caricature. Usually inept with hands and feet, Beerbohm excelled in heads and with dandified male costume of a period whose elegance became a source of nostalgic inspiration. His small but exquisite literary output, including the novel Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford Love Story (1911), was matched by collections of illustrative work, such as Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), The Poets' Corner (1904) and Rossetti and his Circle (1922/R 1987; all London). He published widely in fashionable magazines, and his works were exhibited regularly in London at the Carfax Gallery (1901-8) and Leicester Galleries (1911-57). After his marriage in 1910 he settled in Italy, living quietly at Rapallo, where he drew and wrote infrequently and decorated books in his library (sold London, Sotheby's, 12 and 13 Dec 1960). There he indulged in nostalgia for a world peopled by late Victorian and Edwardian political, literary and theatrical eminences, in which the court of Edward VII had a special place as a subject for affectionate ridicule. He was knighted in 1939.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) was a well-known caricaturist,drama critic, and essayist, one of England's most popular-and at times, much pilloried-menof letters.

Born in London on August 24, 1872, Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was the last of several children of a Lithuanian-born grain merchant, Julius Ewald Beerbohm. His mother was Eliza Draper Beerbohm, the sister of Julius's late first wife. It was a well-to-do London family, and Max grew up with the four sisters from his father's second marriage. He was also close to four half-siblings, one of whom, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was already a renowned stage actor when Max was a child.

An Undergraduate Prodigy

Beerbohm attended the Charterhouse School, a respected private academy for boys, and did reasonably well there. As a teen he became known for his wit and talent for sketching hilarious caricatures of his teachers and classmates. In 1890, he began at Merton, a college of Oxford University. Though he was an unenthusiastic student academically, Beerbohm became a well-known figure in campus social circles. He also began submitting articles and caricatures to London publications, which were met enthusiastically. By 1894, already a rising star in English letters, he left Oxford without a degree.

Through an acquaintanceship with an outstanding young illustrator and writer, Aubrey Beardsley, Beerbohm became involved with a controversial and acclaimed journal called the Yellow Book, upon its launch in 1894. For its first issue he penned "The Pervasion of Rouge," a satirical look at cosmetics, which were still considered somewhat disreputable for women. Beerbohm praised them for their ultimate good in terminating "the reign of terror of nature." This essay was singled out for vilification as "decadent," and subsequent issues of the Yellow Book containing his work, were roundly condemned by the establishment.

First Book

In 1895, Beerbohm went to America for several months as secretary to Tree's theatrical company. He was fired when he spent far too many hours polishing the business correspondence. There he became engaged to an American actress of the troupe, Grace Conover, a relationship that lasted several years. Returning to England, Beerbohm found success with his first book, a collection of essays he had written while still at Oxford and published by Lane in 1896. The Works of Max Beerbohm launched his career spectacularly. "Replete with mock-scholarly footnotes and biographical information, The Works epitomizes Beerbohm's penchant for deflating pretentiousness with satiric imitation," opined Ann Adams Cleary in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Anything large-ideas, ideals, literary works, London crowds-caused him dismay."

In his first book, the 23-year-old Beerbohm announced gravely that he would now retire from letters, having said all there was to say. Of course, he did not. He penned his first piece of fiction, "The Happy Hypocrite," published in the Yellow Book in 1897. The following year, the esteemed playwright and essayist, George Bernard Shaw, gave up his drama critic's post at the Saturday Review, and Beerbohm assumed the duties. The Saturday Review was undergoing a resurgence of popularity under its new owner, the writer Frank Harris, who would later become a close friend of Beerbohm's. It was Shaw, in his final Review piece, who bestowed upon Beerbohm the lasting epithet, "the incomparable Max."

True to form, Beerbohm's first review was titled "Why I Ought Not To Have Become a Dramatic Critic." For the next twelve years, he wrote over 453 pieces of drama criticism. His own experiences and connections in the London theater world made him relatively immune from awe when it came to the writers, directors, or performers. "His impressionistic criticism, always entertaining, was often wittily contemptuous of the pretensions of players, playwrights, and playgoers alike," declared Cleary in her Dictionary of Literary Biography essay. Many of these articles were published in the 1924 volume Around Theatres. Later collections, brought forth several years after Beerbohm's death, include More Theatres 1898-1903 from 1969 and Last Theatres 1904-1910, dating from 1970. Volumes of his essays-sequels to The Works of Max Beerbohm-appeared as 1899's More and Yet Again, issued in 1910.

Distinguished by Prose and Pen

At Charterhouse, Beerbohm had learned Latin, and he would later say the classical language training was of great importance to him as a writer. A background in Latin, Beerbohm wrote in an essay titled "Lytton Strachey," published in Mainly on the Air, was "essential to the making of a decent style," he asserted, because "English is an immensely odd and irregular language." He expounded on that thought in a sentence that made clear his intent: "There are few who can so wield it as to make their meaning clear without prolixity-and among those few, none who has not been well-grounded in Latin."

Aside from his talents as a devastatingly adept and witty writer, Beerbohm also enjoyed a burgeoning career as a caricaturist. His subjects were the literary giants of English letters, British politicians, and the royal family. In these comical drawings, Beerbohm satirized the foibles of friends and dignitaries alike. A much-reproduced one of Oscar Wilde-a friend of Beerbohm's-helped launch this side of his career in 1894, just before Wilde was jailed on charges of sexual misconduct.

Beerbohm enjoyed numerous exhibitions of his drawings in private London galleries like the Leicester. Kenneth Baker, writing in the Spectator in 1997, asserted that Beerbohm's caricatures "single-handedly … ended the long period of Victorian servility." The art of caricature, Baker went on to explain, had been extremely popular in eighteenth-century London, when print shops sold images of the royal family that went so far as to mock imagined sexual perversions. But during the Victorian era, English culture grew far more constricted and conservative, and political figures were depicted only as dignified personages. "As for the Queen, after 1870 any irreverent cartoons were tantamount to treason," Baker wrote in the Spectator. "Max Beerbohm helped to put an end to all this." Most of this artistic output was published in book form: Rossetti and His Circle, issued in 1922. It is considered representative of Beerbohm at the peak of his energies as a caricaturist.

Beerbohm and the Duke of Windsor

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Edward VII were favorite targets of Beerbohm's pen. In 1923, another show of his work was held at the Leicester. Included was a caricature of the heir to England's throne, the man who later became the Duke of Windsor. The prince was still an enthusiastic bachelor as his brothers settled down into marriage, and Beerbohm's Leicester show exhibited "Long Choosing and Beginning Late," a drawing which presented an elderly prince marrying the daughter of his boardinghouse-keeper, complete with the Times of London newspaper announcement. It caused a great stir, and newspapers decried Beerbohm for his disrespect to the throne; one even portended this as "The End of Max Beerbohm."

In response, Beerbohm removed the drawing from the exhibition, and a few years later it was sold to a private party. Remarkably, in 1936 the actual Prince of Wales, by then King Edward VIII, abdicated his throne in order to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, whose mother had once run a boardinghouse in Baltimore, Maryland.

Beerbohm mocked the royal family in other ways. During the reign of the Duke of Windsor's father, George V, the court was known for its confining, and rather colorless atmosphere. For friends' eyes only, Beerbohm once penned a verbal duel between two courtiers that read, in part, "the King is duller than the Queen … Oh no, the Queen is duller than the King." Someone passed it to the royal family, and it was said that the jest kept Beerbohm from the honor of knighthood for twenty years. But Beerbohm also told one of his biographers, S. N. Behrman, that the Windsor family owned several of his caricatures of their ancestors for their own private amusement.

Moved to Italy

Beerbohm had become a well-known figure in London literary circles. In 1908, he became engaged to Florence Kahn, an acclaimed actress from Memphis, Tennessee who was then touring England. They married in 1910, and Beerbohm gave up his post at the Saturday Review. He and his wife moved to a home called Villino Chiaro in Rapallo, Italy. At the time, Italy was a very inexpensive place to live, added to its bounteous geographic attributes. Beerbohm, however, never learned to speak Italian in his five decades as an expatriate.

In Rapallo he began writing fiction in earnest. His first and only novel, Zuleika Dobson, was published in 1911 and met with great success. Set at Oxford, it is a comic tale of a femme fatale visitor who lays waste to the entire male student population. The following year, a volume of Beerbohm's literary parodies, A Christmas Garland, Woven by Max Beerbohm, was published. It contained essays on the holiday season that mimicked the style of some of the greatest living writers of the day: Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells. Another of Beerbohm's literary parodies was published in 1946 and mocked the style of Henry James. The Mote in the Middle Distance offers up "James's convoluted syntax within a trivial context," explained Cleary in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, as "Jamesian children lengthily consider the moral ramifications of peeking in Christmas stockings."

An Eminent Retirement

The Beerbohms returned to England in 1915 on account of World War I, but were back in Rapallo by 1919. That same year, another book of fiction, Seven Men, was published. This work contained short-story profiles of six fictional characters; Beerbohm himself being the seventh. One of them, "Enoch Soames," followed the tragicomic tale of a failed writer, certain that history would correct the judgment of his peers. He struck a bargain with the devil in order to time-travel to the British Museum reading room in 1997, where he was appalled to find even more vicious negative assessments of his work.

Beerbohm more or less retired in the mid-1920s, and enjoyed the publication of a ten-volume series of his writings and caricatures. It bore the already-used, though now more appropriate title, The Works of Max Beerbohm. These were brought forth between 1922 and 1928 by Heinemann, his longtime publisher. By now Beerbohm was in his fifties. He returned to England around 1936 when his wife was cast in a revival of Peer Gynt on the London stage. Beerbohm resumed writing essays when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) invited him to give regular broadcasts. The success of these programs made Beerbohm a well-known emeritus of British humor. They were collected in the 1946 work, Mainly on the Air.

In 1939, Beerbohm finally received the title of "Sir" when he was knighted by King George VI. He and Florence remained in England throughout World War II. His humorous radio broadcasts helped to improve the morale of Britain's war-torn populace. In 1942, the Maximilian Society was created in his honor, upon the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Formed by a London drama critic, it boasted 70 distinguished members, and planned to add one more fan of Beerbohm's on each successive birthday. Their first get-together feted him with a banquet and the gift of seventy bottles of wine.

Beerbohm's wife died in 1951, and for the next few years a German woman named Elisabeth Jungmann looked after the ailing writer. They married in secret just a few weeks before he died on May 20, 1956 in Rapallo. His ashes lie in an urn at London's St. Paul's Cathedral. The most recent collection of his art, Max Beerbohm's Caricatures, was published in 1997.

Further Reading

Behrman, S. N. Portrait of Max: An Intimate Memoir of Sir Max Beerbohm, Random House, 1960.

Cyclopedia of World Authors, edited by Frank N. Magill, Salem Press, 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 34: British Novelists, 1890-1929: Traditionalists, edited by Thomas F. Staley, Gale Research, 1984.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 100: Modern British Essayists, edited by William Blissett, Gale Research, 1990.

Spectator, October 25, 1997.

Quotes:

"There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success."

"Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up."

"The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end."

"One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests."

"To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine."

"Nobody ever died of laughter."

See more famous quotes by Sir Max Beerbohm

Max Beerbohm as depicted by Walter Sickert for Vanity Fair in 1897

Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (August 24, 1872 – May 20, 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Beerbohm as Writer 3 Caricaturist 4 Personal life 5 Media Portrayals 6 Books of Max Beerbohm's works 6.1 Written works 6.2 Collections of caricatures 7 Secondary literature 8 See also 9 Notes 10 External links

Early life

Max Beerbohm, self-caricature (1897)

Born in London, England at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace,^[1] Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was the youngest of nine children of a Lithuanian-born grain merchant, Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–1892). His mother was Eliza Draper Beerbohm (d. 1918), the sister of Julius's late first wife. It was a well-to-do London family, and Beerbohm grew up with the four sisters from his father's second marriage. One of these sisters was Agnes Mary Beerbohm (1865-1949), who became Mrs Ralph Neville in 1884; she was a friend of the artist Walter Sickert and modelled for him in his 1906 painting Fancy Dress.^[2] He was also close to four half-siblings, one of whom, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was already a renowned stage actor when Max Beerbohm was a child.^[3] Other older half-siblings were the author and explorer Julius Beerbohm^[4] and the author Constance Beerbohm. His nieces were Viola, Felicity and Iris Tree.

From 1881 to 1885 Max — he was always called simply 'Max' and it is thus that he signed his drawings — attended the day school of a Mr Wilkinson in Orme Square. Mr Wilkinson, Beerbohm later said, ‘gave me my love of Latin and thereby enabled me to write English’.^[5] Mrs Wilkinson taught drawing to the students, the only lessons Beerbohm ever had in the subject.^[4]

Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford from 1890, where he was Secretary of the Myrmidon Club. While at Oxford Beerbohm became acquainted with Oscar Wilde and his circle through his brother, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. By the time Beerbohm left Oxford, he had developed his personality as a dandy and humorist. In 1893 he became acquainted with William Rothenstein, who introduced him to Aubrey Beardsley and other members of the literary and artistic circle connected with The Bodley Head.^[6] Though he was an unenthusiastic student academically, Beerbohm became a well-known figure in Oxford social circles. He also began submitting articles and caricatures to London publications, which were met enthusiastically. By 1894, already a rising star in English letters, he left Oxford without a degree.^[3]

It was at school that he began writing. His A Defence of Cosmetics (The Pervasion of Rouge) appeared in the first edition of The Yellow Book in 1894, his friend Aubrey Beardsley being art editor at the time. His essay was singled out for vilification as "decadent", and subsequent issues of The Yellow Book containing his work were condemned by the establishment.

In 1895 Beerbohm went to America for several months as secretary to his brother Herbert Beerbohm Tree's theatrical company. He was fired when he spent far too many hours polishing the business correspondence. There he became engaged to Grace Conover, an American actress in the company, a relationship that lasted several years.

Beerbohm as Writer

Cover and slipcase of The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)

On his return to England Beerbohm published his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), a collection of his essays which had first appeared in The Yellow Book. His first piece of fiction, The Happy Hypocrite, was published in The Yellow Book in 1897. Having been interviewed by George Bernard Shaw himself, in 1898 he followed Shaw as drama critic for the Saturday Review,^[7] on whose staff he remained until 1910. At that time the Saturday Review was undergoing renewed popularity under its new owner, the writer Frank Harris, who would later become a close friend of Beerbohm's. It was Shaw, in his final Saturday Review piece, who bestowed upon Beerbohm the lasting epithet, "the Incomparable Max"^[3] when he wrote, "The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max".^[8]

In 1904 Beerbohm met the American actress Florence Kahn. In 1910 they married and moved to Rapallo in Italy, partly as an escape from the social demands and the expense of living in London. Here they remained for the rest of their lives except for the duration of World War I and World War II, when they returned to Britain, and occasional trips to England to take part in exhibitions of his drawings. In his years in Rapallo Beerbohm was visited by many of the eminent men and women of his day, including Ezra Pound, who lived nearby, Somerset Maugham, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Truman Capote among others.^[9] Beerbohm never learned to speak Italian in the five decades that he lived in Italy.^[3]

From 1935 onwards, he was an occasional if popular radio broadcaster, talking on cars and carriages and music halls for the BBC. His radio talks were published in 1946 as Mainly on the Air. His wit is shown often enough in his caricatures but his letters contain a carefully blended humour—a gentle admonishing of the excesses of the day—whilst remaining firmly tongue in cheek. His lifelong friend Reginald Turner, who was also an aesthete and a somewhat witty companion, saved many of Beerbohm's letters.

Beerbohm's best known works include A Christmas Garland (1912), a parody of literary styles, Seven Men (1919), which includes "Enoch Soames", the tale of a poet who makes a deal with the Devil to find out how posterity will remember him, and Zuleika Dobson (1911), his only novel.

Caricaturist

Club Types published in Strand Magazine Volume 4, 1892

In the 1890s, while a student at Oxford University, Beerbohm showed great skill at observant figure sketching. His usual style of single-figure caricatures on formalized groupings, drawn in pen or pencil with delicately applied watercolour tinting, was established by 1896 and flourished until about 1930. In contrast to the heavier artistic style of the Punch tradition he showed a lightness of touch and simplicity of line. Beerbohm's career as a professional caricaturist began when he was twenty: in 1892 the Strand Magazine published thirty-six of his drawings of ‘Club Types’. Their publication dealt, Beerbohm said, ‘a great, an almost mortal blow to my modesty’.^[10]

Caricature of Oscar Wilde by Beerbohm (1916) from Rossetti and His Circle

'Dante Gabriel Rossetti in His Back-Garden' from The Poets' Corner (1904)

He was influenced by French cartoonists such as 'Sem' (Georges Grousset) and 'Caran d'Ache' (Emmanuel Poir).^[11] Beerbohm was hailed by The Times in 1913 as "the greatest of English comic artists", by Bernard Berenson as "the English Goya", and by Edmund Wilson as "the greatest...portrayer of personalities - in the history of art".^[12]

Usually inept with hands and feet, Beerbohm excelled in heads and with dandified male costume of a period whose elegance became a source of nostalgic inspiration. His collections of caricatures included Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), The Poets' Corner (1904), Fifty Caricatures (1913) and Rossetti and His Circle (1922). His caricatures were published widely in the fashionable magazines of the time, and his works were exhibited regularly in London at the Carfax Gallery (1901-8) and Leicester Galleries (1911-57). At his Rapallo home he drew and wrote infrequently and decorated books in his library. These were sold at auction by Sotheby's of London on 12 and 13 December 1960 following the death of his second wife and literary executor Elisabeth Jungmann.^[11]

His Rapallo caricatures were mostly of late Victorian and Edwardian political, literary and theatrical personalities. The court of Edward VII had a special place as a subject for affectionate ridicule. Many of Beerbohm's later caricatures were of himself.^[4]

Major collections of Beerbohm's caricatures are to be found in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Tate collection; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Charterhouse School; the Clark Library, University of California; and the Lilly Library, University of Indiana; depositories of both caricatures and archival material include Merton College Library, Oxford; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Robert H. Taylor collection, Princeton University Library; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; and the privately owned Mark Samuels Lasner collection.^[4]

Personal life

Beerbohm in his later years

Beerbohm's ashes are interred under the tile marked 'MB'

Beerbohm married the actress Florence Kahn in 1910. There has been speculation that he was a non-active homosexual, that his marriage was never consummated, that he was a 'natural celibate' or even just asexual.^[13] David Cecil wrote that, "though he showed no moral disapproval of homosexuality, [Beerbohm] was not disposed to it himself; on the contrary he looked upon it as a great misfortune to be avoided if possible." Cecil quotes a letter from Beerbohm to Oscar Wilde's friend Robert Ross in which he asks Ross to keep Reggie Turner from the clutches of Lord Alfred Douglas, "I really think Reg is at a rather crucial point of his career - and should hate to see him fall an entire victim to the love that dare not tell its name."^[14] The fact is that not much is known of Beerbohm's private life.

There was also some speculation during his lifetime that Beerbohm was Jewish. His response was that disappointingly he was not. However, both of his wives were German Jews. When asked by George Bernard Shaw if he had any Jewish ancestors, Beerbohm replied: "That my talent is rather like Jewish talent I admit readily. . . . But, being in fact a Gentile, I am, in a small way, rather remarkable, and wish to remain so."^[14] In his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Ezra Pound, a neighbour in Rapallo, caricatured Beerbohm as 'Brennbaum', a Jewish artist.^[15]

He was knighted by George VI in 1939. In 1942 the Maximilian Society was created in his honour, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Formed by a London drama critic, it was made up of 70 distinguished members, and planned to add one more member on each of Beerbohm's successive birthdays. In their first meeting a banquet was held in Beerbohm's honour, and he was presented with seventy bottles of wine.^[3]

He died at the Villa Chiara, a private hospital in Rapallo, Italy aged 83, shortly after marrying his former secretary and companion, Elisabeth Jungmann.^[16]

Beerbohm was cremated in Genoa and his ashes were interred in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, London on 29 June 1956.

Media Portrayals

In the BBC 1982 Playhouse drama Aubrey, written by John Selwyn Gilbert, Beerbohm was portrayed by actor Alex Norton. The drama followed Aubrey Beardsley's life from the time of Oscar Wilde’s arrest in April 1895, which resulted in Beardsley losing his position at The Yellow Book, to his death from tuberculosis in 1898.^[17]

Books of Max Beerbohm's works

Two of Beerbohm's self-portraits. "The Theft" depicts him stealing a book from the library in 1894. "The Restitution" shows him returning that book in 1920.

Written works

• The Works of Max Beerbohm, with a Bibliography by John Lane (1896)
• More (1899)
• Yet Again (1909)
• Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911)
• A Christmas Garland, Woven by Max Beerbohm (1912)
• Seven Men (1919; enlarged edition as Seven Men, and Two Others, 1950)
• Herbert Beerbohm Tree: Some Memories of Him and of His Art (1920, ed. by Max Beerbohm)
• And Even Now (1920)
• A Peep into the Past (1923)
• Around Theatres (1924)
• A Variety of Things (1928)
• The Dreadful Dragon of Hay Hill (1928)
• Lytton Strachey (1943) Rede Lecture
• Mainly on the Air (1946; enlarged edition 1957)
• The Incomparable Max: A Collection of Writings of Sir Max Beerbohm" (1962)
• Max in Verse: Rhymes and Parodies (1963, ed. by J. G. Riewald)
• Letters to Reggie Turner (1964, ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)
• More Theatres, 1898–1903 (1969, ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)
• Selected Prose (1970, ed. by Lord David Cecil)
• Max and Will: Max Beerbohm and William Rothenstein: Their Friendship and Letters (1975, ed. by Mary M. Lago and Karl Beckson)
• Letters of Max Beerbohm: 1892–1956 (1988, ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)
• Last Theatres (1970, ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)
• A Peep into the Past and Other Prose Pieces (1972)
• Max Beerbohm and "The Mirror of the Past" (1982, ed. Lawrence Danson)

Collections of caricatures

• Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896)
• The Poets' Corner (1904)
• A Book of Caricatures (1907)
• Cartoons: The Second Childhood of John Bull (1911)
• Fifty Caricatures (1913)
• A Survey (1921)
• Rossetti and His Circle (1922)
• Things New and Old (1923)
• Observations (1925)
• Heroes and Heroines of Bitter Sweet (1931) five drawings in a portfolio
• Max's Nineties: Drawings 1892–1899 (1958, ed. Rupert Hart-Davies and Allan Wade)
• Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures: From Homer to Huxley (1977, ed. J. G. Riewald)
• Max Beerbohm Caricatures (1997, ed. N. John Hall)
• Enoch Soames: A Critical Heritage (1997)

Secondary literature

• Behrman, S. N., Portrait of Max. (1960)
• Cecil, Lord David, Max: A Biography of Max Beerbohm. (1964, reprint 1985)
• Danson, Lawrence. Max Beerbohm and the Act of Writing. (1989)
• Felstiner, John. The Lies of Art: Max Beerbohm's Parody and Caricature. (1972)
• Gallatin, A. H. Bibliography of the Works of Max Beerbohm. (1952)
• Gallatin, A. H. Max Beerbohm: Bibliographical Notes. (1944)
• Grushow, Ira. The Imaginary Reminiscences of Max Beerbohm. (1984)
• Hall, N. John. Max Beerbohm: A Kind of a Life. (2002)
• Hart-Davis, Rupert A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm. (1972)
• Lynch, Bohun. Max Beerbohm in Perspective. (1922)
• McElderderry, Bruce J. Max Beerbohm. (1971)
• Riewald, J. G. Sir Max Beerbohm, Man and Writer: A Critical Analysis with a Brief Life and Bibliography. (1953)
• Riewald, J. G. The Surprise of Excellence: Modern Essays of Max Beerbohm. (1974)
• Riewald, J. G. Remembering Max Beerbohm: Correspondence Conversations Criticisms. (1991)
• Viscusi, Robert. Max Beerbohm, or the Dandy Dante: Rereading with Mirrors. (1986)
• Waugh, Evelyn. "Max Beerbohm: A Lesson in Manners." (1956)

See also

• Beerbohm family

Notes

1. ^ "On the 24th instant, at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, the wife of J. E. Beerbohm, Esq., of a son." The Times August 26 1872
2. ^ [1] Baron, Wendy 'Sickert: Paintings and Drawings' Published by Yale University Press (206) pg 315 ISBN 0300111290
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 34: British Novelists, 1890-1929: Traditionalists, edited by Thomas F. Staley, Gale Research (1984)
4. ^ ^{a b c d} N. John Hall, ‘Beerbohm, Sir Henry Maximilian [Max] (1872–1956)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, January 2008
5. ^ William Rothenstein, 'Men and Memories: recollections of William Rothenstein, 1900–1922' (1932) pgs 370–71
6. ^ [2] Max Beerbohm: An Inventory of His Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
7. ^ Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 49. ISBN 0-671-77104-3.
8. ^ [3] Beerbohm on Victorianweb.org
9. ^ [4] Max Beerbohm: Wit, Elegance and Caricature (2005)
10. ^ Beerbohm, Max ‘When 9 was nineteen’, Strand Magazine, October 1946, pg 51
11. ^ ^{a b} [5] Beerbohm on Answers.com
12. ^ Hall, N. John 'Max Beerbohm's Caricatures' Yale University Press (1997) ISBN 0300072171
13. ^ Hall, pgs 120–21
14. ^ ^{a b} [6] 'The Beerbohm Cult' by Joseph Epstein in The Weekly Standard 11 November 2002
15. ^ [7] Hugh Selwyn Mauberley on Answers.com
16. ^ Hall, pg 246
17. ^ [8] Aubrey by John Sewyn Gilbert

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Max Beerbohm

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Max Beerbohm

• Artcyclopedia entry
• Works by Max Beerbohm at Project Gutenberg
• Victorian Web: Max Beerbohm
• Enoch Soames bibliography
• Free downloads in HTML, PDF, text formats at ebooktakeaway.com
• Max Beerbohm Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.

v • d • e Max Beerbohm Family Herbert Beerbohm Tree  · Julius Beerbohm  · Constance Beerbohm  · Elisabeth Jungmann  · Florence Kahn  · Beerbohm family Prose works A Defence of Cosmetics (1894)  · The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896) · The Happy Hypocrite (1897) · Zuleika Dobson (1911) · A Christmas Garland (1912)  · Seven Men (1919) · Enoch Soames (1919) · A Peep into the Past (1923)  · Mainly on the Air (1946) Books of Caricatures Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896) · The Poets' Corner (1904) · Fifty Caricatures (1913)  · A Survey (1921)  · Rossetti and His Circle (1922}

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)