Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, known as Max Beerbohm, was a prominent English writer and caricaturist, born into a family with artistic connections, including his brother Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, a celebrated actor. He was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford, although he left before graduating. During his time at Oxford, he developed an interest in writing and caricature, leading to his first published works in the early 1890s, including contributions to the Strand Magazine and The Yellow Book.
Beerbohm became well-known as a drama critic for the Saturday Review, appointed by George Bernard Shaw, and continued this role until 1910. His literary contributions included a variety of essays, stories, and caricatures, with notable works such as "The Happy Hypocrite" and "Zuleika Dobson," the latter being a classic fantasy. He married actress Florence Kahn and later, after her death, wed Elizabeth Jungman shortly before his own passing in 1956. Beerbohm is celebrated for his unique prose style, his humor, and his significant influence on English essay writing, ranking alongside notable figures like Charles Lamb and Oscar Wilde.
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Subject Terms
Max Beerbohm
English drama critic, essayist, and caricaturist
- Born: August 24, 1872
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: May 20, 1956
- Place of death: Rapallo, Italy
Biography
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (BIHR-bohm) was the youngest child of his father’s second marriage. Julius E. E. Beerbohm’s first wife bore three sons and a daughter; of these children, the most widely known was the celebrated actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. With his second wife, who was the sister of his first wife, Beerbohm had four daughters and a son, Max. Max Beerbohm attended Charterhouse School from 1885 to 1890, when he enrolled at Merton College, Oxford; he left there in 1894 without taking a degree.
During his undergraduate days at Oxford, Beerbohm seems to have avoided most lectures and all athletics and to have been interested mainly in his position as a young man about campus. He made his initial appearances as writer and caricaturist during this time. His first published caricatures appeared in three issues of the Strand Magazine in 1892, and in 1894 he contributed to the first volume of The Yellow Book. In 1895, he accompanied Beerbohm Tree to America as a secretary. After he returned to London, his first published book appeared in 1896 under the title The Works of Max Beerbohm, which included a bibliography of his writings supplied by his publisher, John Lane. The same year also saw publication of his first book of drawings, Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen. In 1898, George Bernard Shaw retired as drama critic of the Saturday Review and appointed Beerbohm to succeed him, introducing him in phrases that were subsequently often quoted: “The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max. . . .” Beerbohm conducted the drama criticisms until his own retirement in 1910.
Beerbohm devoted his time to his drawings (which were shown at the Leicester Galleries and later issued in book form), essays, stories, and criticisms. He put together a number of collections of essays, beginning with The Happy Hypocrite in 1897 and simultaneously published books of his caricatures. Rossetti and His Circle is often considered his best work in that genre. His reputation as a writer and caricaturist thus developed in tandem as the two complementary sides of his highly individualized personality. In 1910, Beerbohm married the talented actress Florence Kahn, who came from Memphis, Tennessee, and had achieved great success in productions of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. After the marriage, the Beerbohms retired to the Villino Chiaro near Rapallo, Italy, where they made their home until their deaths. In 1939, Beerbohm was knighted by George VI. After Beerbohm’s wife died in Italy in 1951, he married Elizabeth Jungman, his secretary-companion and a family friend, in a secret ceremony only a month before his own death on May 20, 1956.
When Beerbohm was making his first appearances in the early 1890’s, Oscar Wilde announced that he had “mastered the secret of perpetual old age.” A courtly wit and satirist, Beerbohm, who had seemed old when he was young, aged gracefully and carried his years as a living legend with cavalier ease. His one novel, Zuleika Dobson, which appeared in 1911, is a classic fantasy subtitled An Oxford Love Story. Almost equally well known are the short stories included in Seven Men, in which the seventh man of the stories is the author himself. Beerbohm ranks next to Charles Lamb among England’s personal essayists, and as a humorist and wit he rivals Wilde. He was the master of an individualized and exquisitely disciplined prose style.
Bibliography
Behrman, S. N. Portrait of Max: An Intimate Memoir of Sir Max Beerbohm. New York: Random House, 1960. Behrman sentimentally recounts his personal friendship with Beerbohm during the last four years of the author’s life.
Bonaparte, Felicia. “Reading the Deadly Text of Modernism: Vico’s Philosophy of History and Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson.” Clio 27 (Spring, 1998): 335-361. Discusses the connection between Beerbohm and Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico in an effort to show that Vico’s influence on nineteenth century thought has been underestimated. Argues for a reading of Beerbohm from the perspective of Vico’s philosophy of history.
Cecil, David. Max: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. A more complete, objective biography than S. N. Behrman’s (above), drawing heavily on quotations from people who knew Beerbohm and from his personal papers.
Epstein, Joseph. “Portraits by Max.” The New Yorker 73 (December 8, 1997): 108-110. In this biographical sketch, the relationship between Beerbohm’s prose and his drawings is discussed; asserts that his draftsman’s line is the perfect visual equivalent of his prose and his prose the perfect verbal match of his line; notes that both his drawings and his writing exhibit painstaking attention to detail, energized by parody and inspired by merry malice.
Felstiner, John. The Lies of Art: Max Beerbohm’s Parody and Caricature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Rejecting the superficial studies of the dandy image that belie Beerbohm’s depth, Felstiner traces the evolution of Beerbohm’s comic art which culminates in parody. Illustrations, bibliography.
Grushow, Ira. The Imaginary Reminiscences of Sir Max Beerbohm. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984. Focuses more on Beerbohm’s quest for form, his prose and caricatures as reminiscences of imagination. Offers an in-depth look at Seven Men and Rossetti and His Circle.
Hall, N. John. Max Beerbohm: A Kind of Life. New Jersey: Yale, 2002. A fun and fascinating portrait of one of the liveliest products of his time.
Hall, N. John. Max Beerbohm Caricatures. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Examines Beerbohm’s characters. Includes illustrations, bibliographical references, and indexes.
Lynch, Bohun. Max Beerbohm in Perspective. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. One of the earliest serious looks at Beerbohm’s writings and caricatures as being part of the same serious artistic statement. Bibliography, illustrations.
McElderry, Bruce R. Max Beerbohm. New York: Twayne, 1972. A helpful general look at Beerbohm’s work from a traditional approach. Contains primary and secondary bibliographies.
Mortimer, John Clifford. “‘The Last Civilized Man on Earth’: The Incomparable Max Beerbohm.” The New York Times Book Review 100 (September 3, 1995): 11-12. Notes that Beerbohm, a dandy of the Victorian era, took great pleasure in the vulgarity of the music hall, leading some critics to say he wasted time there that could have been spent writing; discusses Beerbohm’s short story “Enoch Soames,” his novel Zuleika Dobson: Or, An Oxford Love Story, and his caricatures and parodies.
Riewald, J. G. Sir Max Beerbohm, Man and Writer: A Critical Analysis with Brief Life and a Bibliography. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1953. A comprehensive, critical overview of Beerbohm’s life and work. Includes a bibliography.