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The Works of Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm's erudite wit and playful conceits represent the pinnacle of the Aesthetic period's capacity to laugh at itself whilst celebrating itself. This book was the author's first, and was presented by him (with tongue lodged firmly in cheek) as a 'collected works', an august memorial to a brilliant career. Included are all seven of his major early essays: Dandies and Dandies on the important distinction between true Regency foppery and its cruder modern notion; A Good Prince portraying the future Edward VIII as an already demanding baby monarch; 1880 and its very recent but already intriguingly faded charms; King George the Fourth rigorously reappraising the Regent; The Pervasion of Rouge celebrating the return of artifice after far too long a naturalcy; Poor Romeo! imagining the story behind a laughing-stock of the Regency stage; and Diminuendo charting the author's own course, firstly to disillusion, and then to retirement in outmoded greatness at the age of 23! Though these essays were justly acclaimed in their time, their magnificence is such that they also demand the highest accolades in ours, replete as they are with undiminished colour and spectacle, humour and barbed excellence. MAX BEERBOHM was born in 1872. He attended Merton College in Oxford, but left without completing his degree. He was a regular contributor to magazines (where these essays originally appeared) and a caricaturist of world renown. He married Florence Kahn in 1910. They moved to Rapallo in Italy and stayed there, apart from the period of the two world wars, for the rest of their lives. Knighted in 1939, Sir Max died in 1956.
- GenresEssays
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1896
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70 people want to read
About the author
Max Beerbohm
281 books92 followersSir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, as "Max," known British writ, apparently wrote
Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen
in 1896.
Henry Maximilian Beerbohm served as an English essayist, parodist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Bee...
Henry Maximilian Beerbohm served as an English essayist, parodist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Bee...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 17, 2019
This will be somewhat short for the reason that I have not the analytical handle on The Works of Max Beerbohm. I very much wanted to love this book but I am not sure into what I got myself.
This collection of essays ranges from the historic to the satiric. It is your call which is which. Humor this dry can be arid. The consistent saving grace is a crafted use of language that makes me think of the word magisterial.
Magisterial shelves in close proximity with ponderous.
Beerbohn is not ponderous. His word choice is exacting and precise and for him natural. His natural audience is steeped in Victorian and especially Edwardian literature. This reader has a feel for the stage and is not going to be daunted by a vocabulary beyond the contemporary American standard of writing to a sixth-grade education.
I think I got most of the jokes and the context can make clear the more serious content. To those who say Beerbohm’s satire is not as biting as Wilde, I think the difference is that Wilde’s satire is sly but clear and clearly understood. Beerbohm’s is layered under a thick coat of dry civility.
Crafted his sentences certainly are. Yet they rarely “smell of the candle” That is they do not reek of late nights spent forcing construction. The author is highly educated, sophisticated and urbane. It Is not pride that has him writing this way, it is his assumption that you are educated, sophisticated and urbane.
This collection of essays ranges from the historic to the satiric. It is your call which is which. Humor this dry can be arid. The consistent saving grace is a crafted use of language that makes me think of the word magisterial.
Magisterial shelves in close proximity with ponderous.
Beerbohn is not ponderous. His word choice is exacting and precise and for him natural. His natural audience is steeped in Victorian and especially Edwardian literature. This reader has a feel for the stage and is not going to be daunted by a vocabulary beyond the contemporary American standard of writing to a sixth-grade education.
I think I got most of the jokes and the context can make clear the more serious content. To those who say Beerbohm’s satire is not as biting as Wilde, I think the difference is that Wilde’s satire is sly but clear and clearly understood. Beerbohm’s is layered under a thick coat of dry civility.
Crafted his sentences certainly are. Yet they rarely “smell of the candle” That is they do not reek of late nights spent forcing construction. The author is highly educated, sophisticated and urbane. It Is not pride that has him writing this way, it is his assumption that you are educated, sophisticated and urbane.
December 17, 2019
From his friend's bibliography at the end:
But what is so far away as yester-year? In 1894, Mr. Beerbohm, in virtue of his 'Defence of Cosmetics,' was but a pamphleteer. In 1895 he was the famous historian, for in that year appeared the two earliest of his profound historical studies, The History of the Year 1880, and his work on King George the Fourth. During the growth of these masterpieces, his was a familiar figure in the British Museum and the Record Office, and tradition asserts that the enlargement of the latter building, which took place some time shortly afterwards, was mainly owing to his exertions.
"The Works of Max Beerbohm" is Max Beerbohm's first book. That's the joke.
His first essay (which is very bad) on the pervasion of rouge was such a sensation, that Max and his friends joked that he had, as we would say, "peaked early," and that this collection was valedictory:
Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period.
The writing has faults. Especially the essay on cosmetics, which has Greek, Latin, French, and Spanish 'tags.' Young Max often seeks out an obscure word for a commonplace idea. I think he gives the game away when the one Latin phrase he puts in English is one everyone knows:
... And now that I have made my adieux to the Benign Mother, I need wait no longer.
But then again, this may be that 'reverse double irony' which is really Max B's gift. I can only quote two stellar examples of what I mean, one from the essay on dandies:
... Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, the army has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to Colonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied his Colonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Any parent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him first into the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in the house of Admetus.
And finally, this little joke about Walter Pater:
... At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a dark lantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as fascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, because there were no nautical terms in it.
It's funny because it's TRUE!
But what is so far away as yester-year? In 1894, Mr. Beerbohm, in virtue of his 'Defence of Cosmetics,' was but a pamphleteer. In 1895 he was the famous historian, for in that year appeared the two earliest of his profound historical studies, The History of the Year 1880, and his work on King George the Fourth. During the growth of these masterpieces, his was a familiar figure in the British Museum and the Record Office, and tradition asserts that the enlargement of the latter building, which took place some time shortly afterwards, was mainly owing to his exertions.
"The Works of Max Beerbohm" is Max Beerbohm's first book. That's the joke.
His first essay (which is very bad) on the pervasion of rouge was such a sensation, that Max and his friends joked that he had, as we would say, "peaked early," and that this collection was valedictory:
Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period.
The writing has faults. Especially the essay on cosmetics, which has Greek, Latin, French, and Spanish 'tags.' Young Max often seeks out an obscure word for a commonplace idea. I think he gives the game away when the one Latin phrase he puts in English is one everyone knows:
... And now that I have made my adieux to the Benign Mother, I need wait no longer.
But then again, this may be that 'reverse double irony' which is really Max B's gift. I can only quote two stellar examples of what I mean, one from the essay on dandies:
... Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, the army has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to Colonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied his Colonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Any parent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him first into the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in the house of Admetus.
And finally, this little joke about Walter Pater:
... At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a dark lantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as fascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, because there were no nautical terms in it.
It's funny because it's TRUE!
November 19, 2018
Dated but that is good
This was adapted for a modern audience. Do you get a bit tired of being adapted to?
The selections in this book are as written. You actually have to research and introduce yourself to the subject at times. This is pleasurable and deserving of some effort.
This was adapted for a modern audience. Do you get a bit tired of being adapted to?
The selections in this book are as written. You actually have to research and introduce yourself to the subject at times. This is pleasurable and deserving of some effort.
June 10, 2015
Not Pater but .....
Did I miss the irony? My mind wandered to the Goncourts. There is nothing bitchy here. He is not Wilde
Did I miss the irony? My mind wandered to the Goncourts. There is nothing bitchy here. He is not Wilde
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews