Max Beerbohm: A Kind of Life [Hardcover]

Professor N. John Hall (Author), N. John Hall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2002

Max Beerbohm was widely celebrated as the wittiest mind of his age. And it was a very long age indeed: he became famous in the mid-1890s and remained so until his death in 1956. His wit manifested itself in both prose and caricature, and his writings and drawings are keenly interesting. Max's life, however, was relatively uneventful, of interest, he said, only to himself. This biography of Max aims to enliven his story by quoting him whenever possible. John Hall moves quickly through Max's history: schoolboy; college undergraduate; London caricaturist, journalist and critic; Edwardian social butterfly; married man and self-exile to Italy in 1910, where he produced numerous books, essays and caricatures; and, from 1935 to 1956, occasional BBC radio broadcaster. Hall notes that although all Max's work during his 15 early years on the London scene concerned contemporary art and life, after his "retirement" in 1910 his writings and drawings harkened back to the late-Victorian/Edwardian era and even to the Pre-Raphaelites; he became, he said, an "interesting link with the past". The volume, like Max's work, highlights his connection with various eminences over three eras: Algernon Swinburne, J.A.M. Whistler, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and many others.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In what may strike readers as an oddly squeamish (not to mention oxymoronic) way to begin a biography, Hall asserts that he will respect his subject's wish that his private life remain a mystery, and he will instead focus only on his public life and his writings and drawings. Yet Hall, a professor of English at CUNY, goes on to say that Beerbohm's gifts as a writer and caricaturist, however celebrated during his life (1872-1956), were ultimately insignificant-"Max does certain small things extraordinarily well, or, in the case of fiction, he makes but a `small' contribution"-leaving the reader to ponder the need for a biography. But Beerbohm created a witty, ultra-dandified persona whose glittering aura has more than made up for the talent that he lacked. After graduating from Oxford, he set out to befriend the best and the brightest (and sometimes the most controversial) figures of his day, including Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, George Bernard Shaw, James Whistler, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Although Hall inexplicably finds "comfort" in staying "out of Max's private life," he occasionally finds himself guiltily (and almost repugnantly) flirting with such personal issues as Beerbohm's rumored homosexuality and his disavowal of his purported Jewishness. In the end, this is a biography about an ingeniously sycophantic man who had a talent for acquiring fabulously interesting, brilliantly creative friends. It is they who come vibrantly alive on the page. 18 b&w and 10 color illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This intriguingly conceived biography reads like a familiar letter, i.e., it will be referenced often for its facts, observations, charm, inviting style, sense of fun and whimsy, and contagious affection for its subject, Max Beerbohm-essayist, critic, and caricaturist. Both fair-minded and lightly satirical, Hall (English, Bronx Community Coll. and Graduate Sch., CUNY) offers an astute analysis of Beerbohm's writings and drawings, as well as his dandyism, friendships, antagonisms, and chaste marriage. Hall offers insightful use of Beerbohm's own words, as well as those of W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and others to reveal the often illusive and sometimes exclusive Beerbohm. Beerbohm's critical reservations concerning the writings of Shaw and Kipling, as well as his reverence for Lytton Stachey, Algernon Swinburne, and Henry James, are profiled wisely, taking into account his own enthusiasms and bias. Citing examples, Hall makes it clear that Oscar Wilde and William Makepeace Thackeray influenced Beerbohm's writing style and that his best writing and caricatures came after 1910, when he resided in Italy with his wife, Florence. Beerbohm's radio broadcasts with the BBC are also excerpted here. Hall has written a perceptive and winning biography that should not be overlooked.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300097050
• ISBN-13: 978-0300097054
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,594,048 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

N. John Hall is considered the world's leading authority on Anthony Trollope and Max Beerbohm. His books include "Trollope: A Biography" and "Max Beebohm: A Kind of Life." He twice has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York. Since 1967 he has lived in Greenwich Village.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A kind of biography, July 3, 2010

By 

Steven Schwartz (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Max Beerbohm: A Kind of Life (Hardcover)

As a writer and caricaturist, Max Beerbohm has unfortunately descended to the level of "cult figure." He is far more an icon of the late Victorian and Edwardian ages, the man who knew seemingly everybody: Wilde, Shaw, Whistler, Wells, Yeats, Arthur Balfour, Beardsley, Henry James, and a host of figures known mainly to scholars of the period. Max (as Maximilians refer to him) deliberately kept his art small and contained -- in its way, a bit like Jane Austen (a writer, ironically, he disliked). However, within those confines he was a master. You read a Beerbohm paragraph and marvel how well it all fits together, as Yeats said, "like the click of a well-made box." His sentences have the chasteness of someone intimately familiar with classical authors, but they don't labor, especially as he grew older. Indeed, you feel yourself in the presence of a very subtle, ironic mind -- in its way, an ultimately moral sensibility -- in the midst of the salons frequented by the great. His drawings not only delight, but instruct. His caricatures of Oscar Wilde trace the decline of that figure. His images of Shaw capture GBS's vitality and self-satisfaction. He has been called by other caricaturists the best since Daumier. Nevertheless, some critics have been fooled by his modesty and his scale. Yet for all of his attempts to downplay his art, Max can't quite hide the facts that he's a prose master and a very acute observer.

N. John Hall, a scholar of Trollope and Browning and a zealous Maximilian, has contributed a strange but valuable book to the Beerbohm canon. S. N. Behrman's classic Portrait of Max gave you a sense of what it was like to be in Max's presence. Hall gives you a sense of what it's like to be in the presence of Max's prose and to be moved by it. This isn't a bio in the normal sense. Very little happened to Max. He wasn't a master spy, an explorer, or a Scotland Yard detective. He dined, talked, wrote, drew, and read. The most exciting thing he ever did was pull up stakes in England and move with his wife to Italy, where he died. Unlike certain recent biographers, Hall doesn't try to poke at Beerbohm's inner life. Hall doesn't care whether Max was homosexual, asexual, strongly or weakly heterosexual, a victim of arrested development, for example. In fact, he shows an obvious distaste for such an enterprise, mainly because Beerbohm, although amiable and even lovable, gave away almost nothing of his inner life, except in his prose and drawings.

Therefore, Hall focuses on the prose and drawings (he also has put out one of the best and readily-available collections of Beerbohm's caricatures). He concentrates not on Max's psyche, but on why he matters. He makes a wonderful job of it. Indeed, I hazard that he may be *too* sympathetic to Max's art, since at times he sounds as if he's trying through his prose to channel the master. All this means that it's an extremely enjoyable book.