Max Beerbohm Caricatures

by N. John Hall

This delightful book is an anthology of Beerbohm`s best images, accompanied by historical and analytical commentary by N. John Hall that is enriched by liberal quotation from Beerbohm`s own witty essays, criticism, letters, and fiction.

Genres: Art

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1997

Reviews

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful period piece ... a whole new slant on the "gentle art of making enemies" as Whistler would say ... however, most of the subjects remained Max's friends ... a collection of droll caricatures, with explanatory text by N. John Hall, for those of us not up to speed on the Edwardians ...

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've already giggled my way twice through this collection: first for the pictures, and second for the commentary, which fortunately quotes Beerbohm every other sentence. My favorite of his quips, directed at Hilaire Belloc: "When you really get talking, Hilary, you're like... a Roman river full of baskets and dead cats." The chapter on Beerbohm's life-long, obsessive hatred of Rudyard Kipling is alone worth admission:

As a young man he took exactly the same kind of interest in soldiers and sailors and steam-engines as most of us take between the ages of five and ten. Last year [1903], I was amused to find that he had just reached the undergraduate stage: he was trying his hand at literary parodies... these parodies, so dull and feeble that no undergraduate editor would have accepted them on their merits, were blazoned forth, day after day, as a special feature of a newspaper that has a huge circulation among quite grown-up persons.