Max Beerbohm (1872–1956)
Author of Zuleika Dobson
About the Author
Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was born in England in 1872. In his twenties, Beerbohm became part of the literary circle of Oscar Wilde, and in 1898 he became the drama critic for the Saturday Review. His predecessor George Bernard Shaw recommended Beerbohm for this position supposedly because of show more Beerbohm's attacks on Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, one of Shaw's own works. It was also Shaw who gave Beerbohm the nickname The Incomparable Max. Beerbohm was known primarily for his sharp wit, often expressed in parody and satire, His first book The Works of Max Beerbohm was a collection of essays in a mock-scholarly format. Other essay collections include Yet Again, And Even Now, Around Theatres, and Mainly on the Air, which was based on a series of radio broadcasts. His fiction includes one novel titled Zuleika Dobson: An Oxford Love Story and numerous short stories. Many of his short stories have been published in such collections as The Happy Hypocrite, Seven Men, and A Variety of Things. Beerbohm's flair for humor and parody was carried over into his art. He was a gifted caricaturist and was as well known for his drawings as for his writing. His drawings have been published in the collections Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen, The Second Childhood of John Bull, A Book of Caricatures, Fifty Caricatures, Rosetti and His Circle, and Things Old and New. Beerbohm resigned from the Saturday Review in 1910 when he married Florence Kahn, an American actress, and they retired to Rapallo, Italy. The Beerbohms returned to England for several years during World War II, but in 1947 they returned to Rapallo where Beerbohm died in 1956. Beerbohm was knighted in 1939. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn, Jan. 15, 1908, London
Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery
(image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery
(image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Works by Max Beerbohm
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm (2015) — Author — 156 copies, 1 review
Max and Will: Max Beerbohm and William Rothenstein: Their Friendship and Letters, 1893-1945 (1975) 12 copies
Meditations of a refugee 2 copies
Ten Years Ago ... [short fiction] 2 copies
Around Theatres Vol. 1 2 copies
The poet and his books 1 copy
3 by Beerbohm 1 copy
'Savonarola' Brown 1 copy
La Reliqia (Racconto) 1 copy
Associated Works
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,017 copies, 7 reviews
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection (1986) — Contributor — 513 copies, 4 reviews
The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse (1930) — Illustrator, some editions — 276 copies, 9 reviews
Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose (1981) — Contributor — 192 copies, 2 reviews
The Golden Argosy: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language (1947) — Contributor — 157 copies, 1 review
The Dedalus Book of English Decadence: Vile Emperors and Elegant Degenerates (2004) — Contributor — 60 copies
Fifty Years: Being a Retrospective Collection of Novels, Novellas, Tales, Drama, Poetry, and Reportage and Essays: All Drawn from Volumes Issued during the Last Half-Century by… (1965) — Contributor — 56 copies
Homefront Horrors: Frights Away from the Front Lines, 1914-1918 (2016) — Contributor — 16 copies, 1 review
The New Forget-Ne-Not : A Calendar — Contributor — 3 copies
About Time: The Forerunners of Time Travel and Temporal Anomalies in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2008) — Contributor — 2 copies
Six Stories 1 copy
The Uncertain Element: An Anthology of Fantastic Conceptions — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Beerbohm, Max
- Legal name
- Beerbohm, Henry Maximilian
- Birthdate
- 1872-08-24
- Date of death
- 1956-05-20
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Oxford (Merton College)
Charterhouse School - Occupations
- parodist
caricaturist
novelist
essayist - Organizations
- Abinger Chronicle (editor)
- Awards and honors
- Knight Bachelor (1939)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Foreign Honorary ∙ Literature ∙ 1943) - Relationships
- Tree, Herbert Beerbohm (half-brother)
Tree, Iris (niece)
Tree, Viola (niece)
Kahn, Florence (wife) - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
Rapallo, Liguria, Italy
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK - Place of death
- Rapallo, Liguria, Italy
- Burial location
- St. Paul's Cathedral, London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
"Zuleika Dobson" was first published in 1911 and is a parody of social life during the Edwardian Era. Max Beerbohm eloquently puts into prose the equivalent of what he drew in his famous artistic caricatures. The result is grossly exaggerated characters in an absurd tale of tragic love. And be prepared for an outrageously grotesque ending.
Zuleika Dobson has to be the most wicked woman in the history of English literature. She is young, wealthy, and drop-dead gorgeous. She knows it, she show more exploits it, and she takes it for granted. And with good reason. She’s a goddess amongst mortal men.
Zuleika is a famous traveling magician and the world is her stage. She has entertained the New York elite, celebrities, the royalty of Europe, and the Tsar. As the story begins, she is making a short visit to her grandfather who is the Warden of Judas College in Oxford. Within 24 hours of her arrival the entire campus is in an uproar. Oxford’s prize student, the young Duke of Dorset, has declared his love for Zuleika and proposed marriage. And upon a humiliating rejection he has vowed to kill himself. Never mind that within the second 24 hours he comes to his senses and realizes she is a superficial fool. He has made the chivalrous vow... and like a gallant knight of yore, he must follow through. The atrocity is Zuleika gleefully helping him stage the event. She wants drama. She wants the Duke to scream out “ZULEIKA” in his final moment to let the entire world know he died for her. I don’t want to reveal the entire plot but will say that it gets worse... much worse.
However, don’t fret. The story is no more emotional than an old fashioned fairytale or a Greek myth. As Zuleika gets her first tour of the college campus, she passes by a row of pedestaled marble busts of the Roman Emperors. With a touch of magical realism, the marble Emperors are so disturbed when they see Zuleika it is later reported there were “great beads of perspiration glistening on the brows of those Emperors.” (Pg. 11) In fact, part of the story is told by a messenger of Clio, one of the nine muses of Greek myth. You will encounter ghosts, black owls that appear to report a coming death, and pearls that mysteriously change color. Beerbohm weaves this unique spellbinding tale into something that is both entertaining and humorous in spite of it’s tragic ending. But if it were not number 59 on the Modern Library list of 100 greatest English novels (an intellectual nudge to read "Zuleika Dobson"), it would probably fade into obscurity. show less
Zuleika Dobson has to be the most wicked woman in the history of English literature. She is young, wealthy, and drop-dead gorgeous. She knows it, she show more exploits it, and she takes it for granted. And with good reason. She’s a goddess amongst mortal men.
Zuleika is a famous traveling magician and the world is her stage. She has entertained the New York elite, celebrities, the royalty of Europe, and the Tsar. As the story begins, she is making a short visit to her grandfather who is the Warden of Judas College in Oxford. Within 24 hours of her arrival the entire campus is in an uproar. Oxford’s prize student, the young Duke of Dorset, has declared his love for Zuleika and proposed marriage. And upon a humiliating rejection he has vowed to kill himself. Never mind that within the second 24 hours he comes to his senses and realizes she is a superficial fool. He has made the chivalrous vow... and like a gallant knight of yore, he must follow through. The atrocity is Zuleika gleefully helping him stage the event. She wants drama. She wants the Duke to scream out “ZULEIKA” in his final moment to let the entire world know he died for her. I don’t want to reveal the entire plot but will say that it gets worse... much worse.
However, don’t fret. The story is no more emotional than an old fashioned fairytale or a Greek myth. As Zuleika gets her first tour of the college campus, she passes by a row of pedestaled marble busts of the Roman Emperors. With a touch of magical realism, the marble Emperors are so disturbed when they see Zuleika it is later reported there were “great beads of perspiration glistening on the brows of those Emperors.” (Pg. 11) In fact, part of the story is told by a messenger of Clio, one of the nine muses of Greek myth. You will encounter ghosts, black owls that appear to report a coming death, and pearls that mysteriously change color. Beerbohm weaves this unique spellbinding tale into something that is both entertaining and humorous in spite of it’s tragic ending. But if it were not number 59 on the Modern Library list of 100 greatest English novels (an intellectual nudge to read "Zuleika Dobson"), it would probably fade into obscurity. show less
Zuleika Dobson is one of those books that regularly appears on lists of "100 Best Novels", and it has sat on my bookshelves for quite a few years. Having seen yet another reference to it in A Passion for Books, I took it down to read. It is a delightful satire of many things: on the surface, principally, of the life of undergraduates at Oxford in Edwardian England (the book was published in 1911) where the undergraduates are portrayed as so shallow and so mindless, with such perverted senses show more of honour, that they drown themselves en masse for the unrequited love of the incomparable Zuleika Dobson, granddaughter of the Warden of the college who comes up for a visit; of the fickleness, not of love itself necessarily, but of what are taken to be the signs of love where passions sweep and then are reversed in the next breath; of the conventions of the class system and each person's part in it (no one looks askance when the main protagonist, the young Duke of Dorset goes to his death in the full regalia of a Knight of the Garter); of the shallowness of attraction: Zuleika is considered a great beauty and she bewitches the entire undergraduate class, but she is in fact shallow, narcissistic, and uninspiring; and finally, of writing itself: the author has a few authorial asides where he claims to have been inspired by Zeus, through Clio, and given powers of omniscience that allow him to describe the emotions of individuals instead of simply recording the history of events. This is an elegant and witty novel, and Beerbohm deserves credit for maintaining the story for as long as he does without it becoming tedious. However, it strikes me that the satirical tone focused on this generation in the Oxford experience, would have been impossible to write after WWI.
There is also a delightful touch of irony at the end. Zuleika is aghast at what has happened with the suicides of the complete undergraduate class and she resolves to get herself to a nunnery, but upon further reflection:
"After all, it didn't so much matter what the world thought. Let the world whisper and insinuate what it would. To slur and sully, to belittle and drag down–that was what the world always tried to do. But great things were still great, and fair things still fair. With no thought for the world's opinion had these men gone down to the water today. Their deed was for her and themselves alone. It had sufficed them. Should it not suffice her? It did, oh it did. She was a wretch to have repined."
And so the novel ends with Zuleika planning the shortest rout from Oxford to Cambridge!
Beerbohm does have one rather good description of men in crowds. It may not be Elias Canetti, but it has a ring of truth to it:
"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost–he becomes just a unit in unreason...A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in them pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."
(Feb/06) show less
There is also a delightful touch of irony at the end. Zuleika is aghast at what has happened with the suicides of the complete undergraduate class and she resolves to get herself to a nunnery, but upon further reflection:
"After all, it didn't so much matter what the world thought. Let the world whisper and insinuate what it would. To slur and sully, to belittle and drag down–that was what the world always tried to do. But great things were still great, and fair things still fair. With no thought for the world's opinion had these men gone down to the water today. Their deed was for her and themselves alone. It had sufficed them. Should it not suffice her? It did, oh it did. She was a wretch to have repined."
And so the novel ends with Zuleika planning the shortest rout from Oxford to Cambridge!
Beerbohm does have one rather good description of men in crowds. It may not be Elias Canetti, but it has a ring of truth to it:
"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost–he becomes just a unit in unreason...A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in them pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."
(Feb/06) show less
I’ve read other short stories and essays by this guy and found them to be interesting and amusing, but admit to being confounded as to the reputation of his novel Zuleka Dobson. There are funny things in that novel, but it’s way past the sale date. This collection on the other hand, is something different. It’s a collection of short stories, created in the format of character vignettes -often concerning fictional writers. There is an odd blending of supernatural elements into the show more stories. They often feel Pythonesque in their absurdity, but feature lucidly observed social and cultural situations. This collection is well written, without drifting into any turn of the century tweeness, which has shown up in other things I've read by the author.
The story “Enoch Soames” which features a pact with the devil, time travel and a self referential punchline, is the one most frequently cited from this collection, but the literary rivalry “Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton:” which culminates in guilt driven ghostly apparitions, I found as surprising and compelling. Most of the stories have their own, off beat unusual charms. Worth a read. show less
The story “Enoch Soames” which features a pact with the devil, time travel and a self referential punchline, is the one most frequently cited from this collection, but the literary rivalry “Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton:” which culminates in guilt driven ghostly apparitions, I found as surprising and compelling. Most of the stories have their own, off beat unusual charms. Worth a read. show less
I am giving Zuleika Dobson four stars as it proved a suitable distraction from the ongoing Brexit fiasco. It reminded me of a black-dyed meringue - sweet, light, fluffy, and very dark. The story is essentially all about death, suicide in fact, while also being a light-hearted magical realist Oxford farce. An interesting and ununusual combination. Although I read the illustrated edition, I must say the pictures didn't do much for me. They were charming enough, but chopped up the text is a show more rather provoking fashion. I was much more fond of the words, especially grandiose words like peripety, aseity, and orgulous, none of which I'd come across before. Beerbohm has a knack for turn of phrase, rather like a less sunny Wodehouse:
The main character is ostensibly the titular Zuleika, a mysterious and bewitching woman who has the whole student body of Oxford killing themselves out of love for her. Another aside from the narrator, of which he allows himself many, comments acerbically on this phenomenon:
The treatment of Zuleika is intriguingly ambivalent. She shows a remarkable lack of remorse for the carnage she apparently caused, yet the students themselves are clearly acting very foolishly and the college fellows seem wilfully ignorant of what's happening. Given the book's original date of publication, 1911, I was tempted to read into it a macabre and prescient satire on patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War. Oxford undergraduates of three years later would after all be effectively committing suicide by trench warfare. Zuleika is perhaps a spectre representative of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. The author cannot have known that a world war would occur, of course, so this is all very retrospective. In any event, 'Zuleika Dobson' is an enjoyably weird novel, in which the best-developed character is the omniscient narrator and supernatural happenings go largely unremarked. Moreover, Zuleika really is a wonderful name for a literal femme fatale. As a dark mockery of Oxford, the aristocracy, and male pomposity in general, the book can be very funny. I did love this sort of dialogue:
It should be noted while reading the above that the Duke is also an undergraduate! show less
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now the railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-nodding to the Duke as he passed by. "Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they were whispering. "We are very sorry for you - very sorry indeed. We never dared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very great tragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world - that is, if members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have."
The main character is ostensibly the titular Zuleika, a mysterious and bewitching woman who has the whole student body of Oxford killing themselves out of love for her. Another aside from the narrator, of which he allows himself many, comments acerbically on this phenomenon:
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows and he is lost - he becomes just a unit in unreason. If any one of the undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he would have fallen in love with her; but not one in a thousand would have wished to die because she did not love him.
The treatment of Zuleika is intriguingly ambivalent. She shows a remarkable lack of remorse for the carnage she apparently caused, yet the students themselves are clearly acting very foolishly and the college fellows seem wilfully ignorant of what's happening. Given the book's original date of publication, 1911, I was tempted to read into it a macabre and prescient satire on patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War. Oxford undergraduates of three years later would after all be effectively committing suicide by trench warfare. Zuleika is perhaps a spectre representative of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. The author cannot have known that a world war would occur, of course, so this is all very retrospective. In any event, 'Zuleika Dobson' is an enjoyably weird novel, in which the best-developed character is the omniscient narrator and supernatural happenings go largely unremarked. Moreover, Zuleika really is a wonderful name for a literal femme fatale. As a dark mockery of Oxford, the aristocracy, and male pomposity in general, the book can be very funny. I did love this sort of dialogue:
Down the flight of steps from Queen's came lounging an average undergraduate.
"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with you."
"But my name is not Smith," said the young man.
"Generically it is," replied the Duke. "You are Smith to all intents and purposes. That, indeed, is why I address you. In making your acquaitance, I make a thousand acquaintances. You are a short cut to knowledge. Tell me, do you seriously think of drowning yourself this afternoon?"
"Rather," said the undergraduate.
"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes, assuredly,'" murmured the Duke, "And why," he then asked, "do you mean to do this?"
"Why? How can you ask? Why are you going to do it?"
"The Socratic manner is not a game that two can play. Please answer my question to the best of your ability."
It should be noted while reading the above that the Duke is also an undergraduate! show less
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