Sir Max Beerbohm

Sir Max Beerbohm , 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.

Bibliography: 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).

Beerbohm, Sir Max [ Henry Maximilian Beerbohm] (1872–1956), English author and critic, half-brother of the actor-manager Tree. From 1898 to 1910 he was dramatic critic of the Saturday Review in succession to Shaw, who introduced him to his readers as ‘the incomparable Max’. In 1908 he married the American actress Florence Kahn (1877–1951) soon after he had seen her playing Rebecca West in Ibsen's Rosmersholm. She had been Mansfield's leading lady in the USA, and was already well known for her playing of Ibsen's heroines. She retired from the stage on her marriage, but made a few guest appearances from time to time, notably as Aase in the Old Vic production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt in 1935. Beerbohm was the author of a one-act play, A Social Success, in which George Alexander made his first appearance on the musichalls in 1913, but is best remembered for The Happy Hypocrite (1900), which he based on one of his own short stories; it was produced at the Royalty Theatre by Mrs Patrick Campbell. In 1936 a three-act version by Clemence Dane starring Ivor Novello was also a success.

Beerbohm, Sir Max (b London, 24 Aug. 1872; d Rapallo, 20 May 1956). British writer, caricaturist, and broadcaster, whose ironic wit was usually directed at the absurd or pretentious in fashionable society. The first of his many books, Caricatures of Twenty-Five Gentlemen, was published in 1896. He usually worked in pen and ink, rapidly and from memory; he was self-taught and believed that ‘to sit down to write is a business requiring thought and conscience. Caricaturing, on the other hand, is pure instinct without any trouble at all.’ However, in spite of the spontaneity of the drawings themselves, he often thought about them in advance, taking notes on his subjects for future use—of Oscar Wilde, for example, he wrote: ‘Wax statue; huge rings; fat white hands; feather bed; pointed fingers; cat-like tread; heavy shoulders; enormous dowager.’ In 1910 he married an American actress (who seldom understood his English humour) and settled at Rapallo in Italy, where he spent the rest of his life apart from the war years. Late in life he won a new audience with talks on BBC radio. His best-known literary work is his only completed novel, Zuleika Dobson (1911), a satire on Oxford student life.