Short Fiction Beerbohm, Max.: Seven Men, v1 21 Apr 2014

[WT Sharpe]

Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm (1872–1956); Seven Men (1919).

This is a conversion of the earlier LRF upload by Madam Broshkina. What follows is her summation:

In "Seven Men" the brilliant 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 of Beerbohm's own first success. In a series of luminous 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. One of the masterpieces of modern humorous writing, "Seven Men" is also a shrewdly perceptive, heartfelt homage to the wonderfully eccentric character of a bygone age.

Note: Enoch Soames has already been posted by Ben G.