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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 was born in 1932 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 in 2009. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, among other awards. His last books were the novel The Widows of Eastwick and Due Considerations, a collection of his essays and criticism. »
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Seven Men
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.
Read the introduction (PDF)
Reviews
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
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Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $12.95
Price: $9.71 (25% off)
Oct 31, 2000
224 pages
ISBN: 0940322544
9780940322547
Literature in English
NYRB Classics
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