Seven Men
Max Beerbohm
Hardcover
(Indypublish.Com, April 1, 2002)
In Seven Men the English caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm turns his comic searchlight upon the fantastic fin de siecle world of the 1890s - the age of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the young Yeats, as well as of Beerbohm's own first success. In a series of luminous prose 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. An ingenious and enduring work of humorous writing, Seven Men is also a shrewdly perceptive, heartfelt homage to the eccentric character of a bygone age.