Max Beerbohm (1872–1956)
“Some Persons of ‘The Nineties’ Little Imagining, Despite Their Proper Pride and Ornamental Aspect, How Much They Will Interest Mr. Holbrook Jackson and Mr. Osbert Burdett”
Illustration from N. John Hall's Max Beerbohm Caricatures
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997
First published in Observations. London: William Heinemann, 1925
Item 24: "Some Persons of 'The Nineties'...." (1997, c1925)
Among Beerbohm’s preoccupations was the relationship between past and present. Here caricatured figures associated with the British Decadence movement gather, unaware that someday they will be featured in The Eighteen Nineties (1913) by Holbrook Jackson—a work dedicated to Beerbohm, with a chapter devoted to “The Incomparable Max”—and The Beardsley Period (1925) by Osbert Burdett, its title taken from a remark young Beerbohm made in 1895, playing at outmodedness (“I belong to the Beardsley period”). To Beerbohm, though, “Persons” meant only “Men.” He omitted contemporary women authors such as Ella D’Arcy, “Michael Field” (the joint pseudonym of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), and “George Egerton” (Mary Chavelita Dunne), who were discussed in these two books.
: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Picture …
