author - "Max Beerbohm"
Description
Max Beerbohm earned his fame as a caricaturist and essayist, and Zuleika Dobson is his only novel. Despite that, Zuleika has earned no small measure of fame, with the Modern Library ranking it 59th in its “100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.” Beerbohm’s essays were famous for their sharp wit and humor, and Zuleika follows in that tradition—Beerbohm himself called the novel “the work of a leisurely essayist amusing himself with a narrative idea.”
The novel follows Zuleika Dobson, a rather talentless woman of middling looks who nonetheless holds an almost mystical power of attraction over the men she comes in contact with. When she begins attending Oxford, she catches the eye of not just the Duke of Dorset, but of the entire male class.
Zuleika is both an easy comedy and a biting satire of Edwardian social mores and of the male-dominated Oxford student culture. Beerbohm also seems to forecast with eerie accuracy the cultural obsession with talentless celebrity that came to dominate the turn of the 21st century.
Description
The Works of Max Beerbohm is a collection of satirical essays by Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1896 at The Bodley Head, his publisher John Lane contributing a detailed bibliography of the works of the author, then aged 24. Before their publication as a book, the essays had appeared in prominent literary periodicals such as The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Most of the essays were written while he was a student at Oxford, although he had left Merton College in 1894. By then he was already known as a caricaturist, parodist and essayist and well acquainted with the writers and artists connected with The Bodley Head, notably Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.
The essays can perhaps be best described as both elaborate parody and vicious satire. Beerbohm’s intimate knowledge of the social circles of the time and his penchant for pointed descriptions of character are always on display, dismantling the purported greatness that surrounds him.
Description
Max Beerbohm earned his fame as a caricaturist and essayist, and Zuleika Dobson is his only novel. Despite that, Zuleika has earned no small measure of fame, with the Modern Library ranking it 59th in its “100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.” Beerbohm’s essays were famous for their sharp wit and humor, and Zuleika follows in that tradition—Beerbohm himself called the novel “the work of a leisurely essayist amusing himself with a narrative idea.”
The novel follows Zuleika Dobson, a rather talentless woman of middling looks who nonetheless holds an almost mystical power of attraction over the men she comes in contact with. When she begins attending Oxford, she catches the eye of not just the Duke of Dorset, but of the entire male class.
Zuleika is both an easy comedy and a biting satire of Edwardian social mores and of the male-dominated Oxford student culture. Beerbohm also seems to forecast with eerie accuracy the cultural obsession with talentless celebrity that came to dominate the turn of the 21st century.
Description
The Works of Max Beerbohm is a collection of satirical essays by Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1896 at The Bodley Head, his publisher John Lane contributing a detailed bibliography of the works of the author, then aged 24. Before their publication as a book, the essays had appeared in prominent literary periodicals such as The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Most of the essays were written while he was a student at Oxford, although he had left Merton College in 1894. By then he was already known as a caricaturist, parodist and essayist and well acquainted with the writers and artists connected with The Bodley Head, notably Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.
The essays can perhaps be best described as both elaborate parody and vicious satire. Beerbohm’s intimate knowledge of the social circles of the time and his penchant for pointed descriptions of character are always on display, dismantling the purported greatness that surrounds him.