Volume 50, Number 2 · February 13, 2003
The Tiny Grandeur of Max Beerbohm
By Sanford Schwartz
Max Beerbohm: A Kind of a Life
by N. John Hall
Yale University Press, 284 pp., $24.95
In a nightmare, Max Beerbohm might have come up with the figure of N. John Hall, the man who, over the past number of decades, whether reissuing old books, bringing out a collection, or now publishing the first biography in forty years, has been the English artist and writer's academic guardian and caretaker. Beerbohm often thought about questions of renown and posterity, how we are remembered or forgotten, and the relationship between someone deserving to be remembered and the rememberer was clearly a sensitive one for him. In some of his most memorable writing, a character named 'Max Beerbohm' is a kind of amateur biographer to certain invented subjects, while Beerbohm's caricatures, his other art, add up to a gigantic biographical portrait of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century England—yet one seen inside out, through completely unauthorized eyes.
Review, 3856 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |