Description: "Max", or as he is sometimes known, Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), was a sophisticated caricaturist with both pen and drawing pencil. England's supreme parodist, he was not above having literary fun. Max took his verses seriously enough to jot them in flyleaves or the margins of borrowed books. He versified eloquently on stray scraps of paper. One was even discovered in his top hat. To the editor there are obvious difficulties in collecting such an oeuvre to offer a full text. These have been heroically overcome by J. G. Riewald, the leading Beerbohm authority, for this definitive anthology of Max Beerbohm's poetry. Of the 138 poems here, fifty-one have never been collected before, and eighty-seven were not even published in Max's lifetime. There are variant readings in manuscript copies, including those written by Max himself, so Dr. Riewald's full textual notes will be welcome - particularly as Max didn't consider "accidentals" of punctuation and capitalization to be accidental at all. Comprehensive historical and biographical commentary, and glosses where necessary, provide any reader with necessary background, and twenty-nine caricatures match illustration to poem so Max can be seen at his best in both mediums. A unique and delightful humor - mocking elegance, mischievous wordplay, pricks that do not seriously wound - is always fundamental to Max. His is the art of incongruity, mixing trivia with high seriousness to diffuse intellectual gaiety. Sir Max's poetry combines first-rate satire with persiflage, and clever exercises in pastiche with pure fun. And it is all here.

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