Beerbohm, Sir Max (bēr`bōm), 1872–1956, English essayist, caricaturist, and parodist. He contributed to the famous Yellow Book while still an undergraduate at Oxford. In 1898 he succeeded G. B. Shaw Shaw, George Bernard, 1856–1950, Irish playwright and critic. He revolutionized the Victorian stage, then dominated by artificial melodramas, by presenting vigorous dramas of ideas. The lengthy prefaces to Shaw's plays reveal his mastery of English prose.
..... Click the link for more information. as drama critic for the Saturday Review. A charming, witty, and elegant man often called "the incomparable Max," Beerbohm was a brilliant parodist and the master of a polished prose style. His works include A Christmas Garland (1912), a collection of parodies on such authors as Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy; Zuleika Dobson (1911), an amusing satire on Oxford; Seven Men (1919), stories; and And Even Now (1920) and Mainly on the Air (1947), essays. Beerbohm was accomplished at drawing, and he published several volumes of excellent caricatures, including The Poet's Corner (1904) and Rossetti and His Circle (1922). He was knighted in 1939 on his return from Italy, where he had lived from 1910.

Bibliography

See collections ed. by S. C. Roberts (1962) and D. Cecil (1971); biographies by D. Cecil (1964) and N. J. Hall (2002); studies by B. Lynch (1974), and L. Danson (1989).

Beerbohm, Sir (Henry) Max(imilian)

(born Aug. 24, 1872, London, Eng.—died May 20, 1956, Rapallo, Italy) English caricaturist, writer, and dandy. His sophisticated drawings and parodies were unique in capturing, usually without malice, whatever was pretentious, affected, or absurd in his famous and fashionable contemporaries. His first literary collection, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), and his first book of drawings, Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), were followed by the charming fable The Happy Hypocrite (1897) and his only novel, Zuleika Dobson (1911), a burlesque of Oxford life. His story collection Seven Men (1919) is considered a masterpiece.