BEERBOHM, MAX (1872– ), British caricaturist and writer, was born in London Aug. 24, 1872, a half-brother of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the actor. He was educated at Charter house and Merton college, Oxford. Before he had left Oxford, Beerbohm had made a reputation as an essayist of wit and polish, The Yellow Book offering him a congenial hospitality. This repu tation was maintained, when he succeeded G. B. Shaw as dramatic critic to The Saturday Review, by the judiciously small amount of work which he published and its almost uniformly high accom plishment, in essays, fiction and parody alike. This includes The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896) ; The Happy Hypocrite (1897) ; More (1899) ; Zuleika Dobson (1911) ; Seven Men (ii) ; And Even Now (1920).
As a caricaturist, Beerbohm's fame followed a parallel line, and his skill as a draughtsman increased with the years. Among his published drawings are Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896) ; The Poet's Corner 0904); Fifty Caricatures (1913) ; Seven Men (1919) ; A Survey (1921) ; Rossetti and His Circle (1922), and Observations (1925). As a sophisticated com mentary on the social and literary life of his time, Beerbohm's economical and often caustic drawings stand alone ; his residence in Italy, at Rapallo, after 1910, gave him many advantages for the detached observation of personalities and tendencies, al though once or twice it may have endangered his perspective; and he is certainly free from a certain fear of acid comment which has dimmed the art of caricature in England since the early Victorian age.