Max Beerbohm
2 books
- You’ll like Beerbohm’s cool, mischievous eye for vanity, especially in pieces like “A Defence of Cosmetics,” where a comic argument becomes a miniature portrait of social posing. The prose is polished and lightly wicked, though the book feels more like a cabinet of curiosities than a continuous read.
- Beerbohm spends a whole novel gleefully drowning Oxford's undergraduates for love of a mediocre conjurer, and somehow it stays light as meringue; the Duke of Dorset's wounded vanity alone is worth it. If you like your comedy arch, mannered, and faintly cruel, this delivers.