Seven Men

by Max Beerbohm, John Updike (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780940322547
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/31/2000
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	1,090,370
Product dimensions:	4.95(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

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 (1932–2009) was born 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. His major work was the set of four novels chronicling the life of Harry “Rabbit: Angstrom, he two of which, Rabbit is Richand Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His last books were the novel The Widows of Eastwick and Due Considerations, a collection of his essays and criticism.

What People are Saying About This

W.H. Auden

As a parodist, he is probably the finest in English.

Bertrand Russell

The most faultless of my contemporaries. . .I prefer Seven Men to all his other books.

Editorial Reviews

"Don’t miss the arch-decadent Enoch Soames and the fortunetelling A.V. Laider." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post, List of 66 Favorite Books

"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

From the Publisher

Reprint of the incomparable Max's classic parody of the end of the 19th-century world. New introduction by John Updike. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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