"Called by Virginia Woolf "the prince" of essayists and praised by F. W. Dupee f
or a "whim of iron, cleverness amounting to genius," Max Beerbohm himself noted
that "only the insane take themselves quite seriously." Nonetheless, from his pr
ecocious debut as a dandy in 1890s Oxford, until after World War II, when he put
the pen aside, Beerbohm was recognized as an incomparable observer of modern li
fe and an essayist whose voice was always and only his own.
