Beerbohm, Sir Max
Related Category: English Literature, 20th cent. to the Present: Biographies
(bēr´bōm), 1872–1956, English essayist, caricaturist, and parodist. He contributed to the famous
Yellow Book while still an undergraduate at Oxford. In 1898 he succeeded G. B.
Shaw as drama critic for the
Saturday Review. A charming, witty, and elegant man often called “the incomparable Max,” Beerbohm was a brilliant parodist and the master of a polished prose style. His works include
A Christmas Garland (1912), a collection of parodies on such authors as Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy;
Zuleika Dobson (1911), an amusing satire on Oxford;
Seven Men (1919), stories; and
And Even Now (1920) and
Mainly on the Air (1947), essays. Beerbohm was accomplished at drawing, and he published several volumes of excellent caricatures, including
The Poet's Corner (1904) and
Rossetti and His Circle (1922). He was knighted in 1939 on his return from Italy, where he had lived from 1910.
See collections ed. by S. C. Roberts (1962) and D. Cecil (1971); biographies by D. Cecil (1964) and N. J. Hall (2002); studies by B. Lynch (1974), and L. Danson (1989).
