Max Beerbohm
Overview
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm (August 24, 1872 – May 20, 1956) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

ist, parodist
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 and caricaturist
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

 best known today for his 1911 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 Zuleika Dobson
Zuleika Dobson
Zuleika Dobson, full title Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story, is a 1911 novel by Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. It was his only novel, but was nonetheless very successful...

.
Born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace, Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was the youngest of nine children of a Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

n-born grain merchant, Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–1892). His mother was Eliza Draper Beerbohm (d. 1918), the sister of Julius's late first wife.
Quotations

Most women are not so young as they are painted.

A Defense of Cosmetics (1895)

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford University|Oxford that has made me insufferable.

More, “Going Back to School” (1899)

The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.

The Spirit of Caricature (1901)

As a teacher, as a propagandist, George Bernard Shaw|Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.

Around Theatres, “A Cursory Conspectus of G.B.S” (1924)

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

Comment

Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir,Albeit to see you I’m unglad.

A Luncheon

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.

Quoted in Max by Lord David Cecil|David Cecil (1964), ch. 2

Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.

Ch. II

She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as notes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future.

Ch. II

 
x
OK