Seven Men (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Beerbohm, Max

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0940322544 ISBN 13: 9780940322547

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2000

Synopsis

In Seven Men the brilliant English caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm turns his comic searchlight upon the fantastic fin-de-siècle world of the 1890s—the age of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the young Yeats, as well of Beerbohm's own first success. In a series of luminous sketches, Beerbohm captures the likes of Enoch Soames, only begetter of the neglected poetic masterwork Fungoids; Maltby and Braxton, two fashionable novelists caught in a bitter rivalry; and "Savonarola" Brown, author of a truly incredible tragedy encompassing the entire Italian Renaissance. One of the masterpieces of modern humorous writing, Seven Men is also a shrewdly perceptive, heartfelt homage to the wonderfully eccentric character of a bygone age.

About this title

About the Author:

Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (1872-1956) was born in London and studied at Oxford. He published his first collection of essays, entitled The Works of Max Beerbohm, in 1896 and soon established a reputation as a brilliant caricaturist and critic. He was married to the American actress Florence Kahn and lived in Rapallo, Italy, for most of his life.

John Updike (1932–2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. In 1954 he began to publish in The New Yorker, where he continued to contribute short stories, poems, and criticism until his death. His major work was the set of four novels chronicling the life of Harry “Rabbit: Angstrom, he two of which, Rabbit is Richand Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His last books were the novel The Widows of Eastwick and Due Considerations, a collection of his essays and criticism.

Review:

"As a parodist, he is probably the finest in English." —W.H. Auden
"The most faultless of my contemporaries...I prefer Seven Men to all his other books." —Bertrand Russell

"Not even a good comedy is so rare as genuine satire, and when an example of the latter is produced some indulgence in superlatives may be excused. In the case of [Seven Men] it is difficult to restrain praise within the bounds of judgment, for its beneficent, limpid ridicule is an undiluted joy." —The Spectator

About this edition

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0940322544
• ISBN 13: 9780940322547
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232