Seven Men and Two Others (The ^AWorld's Classics) - Softcover

The tales that make up "Seven Men: And Two Others" start out as a set of "faux" memoirs set amid London literary life in the precious "fin de siècle" era (in which Beerbohm played a leading role) and proceed into deliciously absurd fantasy. With a sense of fun, a hint of nostalgia, razor-sharp satire, and pitch-perfect parody, Beerbohm tugs at the affected nature of the whole literary scene--lamentable authors, wily agents, preposterous weekend salons. A long-out-of-print classic that still rings true today. Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) was one of the greatest English comic artists of all time; as well a novelist and essayist, he was a contributor to "THE YELLOW BOOK" and succeeded George Bernard Shaw as dramatic critic of the "SATURDAY REVIEW."

The reissue, with a new introduction by Nigel Williams, of Max Beerbohm's (Zulieka Dobson) collection of parodic portraits, Seven Men and Two Others, is a witty and delightful read, though perhaps best suited to Anglophiles. One of the best stories is "Enoch Soames," in which the narrator (Beerbohm himself) witnesses a deal struck between the eponymous mediocre poet and the devil. Soames makes a Faustian agreement to travel a hundred years into the future to see whether his work has been forgotten and finds only Beerbohm's story about him. The vanity of those in the literary life is prominently featured throughout and turns out to be prophetic indeed.

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