Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the Saturday Review from 1898 until 1910, when he relocated to Rapallo, Italy. In his later years he was popular for his occasional radio broadcasts. Among his best-known works is his only novel, Zuleika Dobson, published in 1911. His caricatures, drawn usually in pen or pencil with muted watercolour tinting, are in many public collections.
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings. Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, and can serve a political purpose, be drawn solely for entertainment, or for a combination of both. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in newspapers and news magazines as political cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines. In literature, a caricature is a distorted representation of a person in a way that exaggerates some characteristics and oversimplifies others.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures.
The Yellow Book was a British quarterly literary periodical that was published in London from 1894 to 1897. It was published at The Bodley Head Publishing House by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and later by John Lane alone, and edited by the American Henry Harland. The periodical was priced at 5 shillings and lent its name to the "Yellow Nineties", referring to the decade of its operation.
The year 1896 in art involved some significant events.
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990.
The Savoy was a magazine of literature, art, and criticism published in eight numbers from January to December 1896 in London. It featured work by authors such as W. B. Yeats, Max Beerbohm, Joseph Conrad, Aubrey Beardsley and William Thomas Horton. Only eight issues of the magazine were published: two quarterly and six monthly (July-December). The publisher was Leonard Smithers, a controversial friend of Oscar Wilde who was also known as a pornographer. Among other publications by Smithers were rare erotic works and unique items such as books bound in human skin.
Leonard Charles Smithers was a London bookseller and publisher associated with the Decadent movement of the late 19th century.
Elisabeth Jungmann, Lady Beerbohm was an interpreter and the secretary, literary executor and second wife of the writer, caricaturist and parodist Sir Max Beerbohm.
The Works of Max Beerbohm was the first book published by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1896 when Beerbohm was aged 24.
Mark Samuels Lasner is an American researcher. He is an authority on the literature and art of the late Victorian era. He is also a collector, bibliographer and typographer. Samuels Lasner is senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library.
The Poets' Corner is a book of twenty caricatures by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1904 by William Heinemann, and was Beerbohm's second book of caricatures, the first being Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896).
Rossetti and His Circle is a book of twenty-three caricatures by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. Published in 1922 by William Heinemann, the drawings were Beerbohm's humorous imaginings concerning the life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his fellow Pre-Raphaelites, the period, as he put it, "just before oneself." The book is now considered one of Beerbohm's masterpieces.
Mainly on the Air is a collection of texts and essays written by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1946 by Heinemann and is a collection of the texts of a series of six BBC Radio broadcasts from 1935 to 1945 and six essays.
A Christmas Garland, Woven by Max Beerbohm is a collection of seventeen parodies written by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was first published in the United Kingdom in October 1912 by Heinemann and in 1913 in the United States by Dutton & Co. of New York.
Constance Mary Beerbohm, was the oldest daughter of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–92), of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper; and the couple had four children. Constance Beerbohm's brother was the renowned actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree; another brother was the engineer, author and explorer Julius Beerbohm; a younger half-brother was the caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm.
Fifty Caricatures is a book of fifty caricatures by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1913 by William Heinemann in Britain and E.P. Dutton & Company in the United States. It was Beerbohm's fifth book of caricatures, after Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), The Poets' Corner (1904), A Book of Caricatures (1907), and Cartoons: The Second Childhood of John Bull (1911).
A Defence of Cosmetics is an essay by caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm and published in the first edition of The Yellow Book in April 1894. Aged 21 when the essay was published, it established his reputation. It later appeared in his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896) as The Pervasion of Rouge.
A Survey is a book of fifty-two caricatures and humorous illustrations by British essayist, caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in Britain in 1921 by William Heinemann and in the United States in the same year by Doubleday, Page & Company of New York City.
Herbert Charles Pollitt, also known as Jerome Pollitt, was a patron of the arts and on-stage female impersonator who performed as Diane de Rougy. He became notorious as a Cambridge undergraduate due to his taste for Decadent art and literature, and was immortalised as the eponymous hero of an E.F. Benson novel in 1896. He became a very close friend of the artist Aubrey Beardsley, and had a brief but significant relationship with the occultist Aleister Crowley. Following his time at Cambridge, Pollitt moved to London and saw service in the First World War as a lance-corporal. He died in 1942.
