AN NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINALCalled by Virginia Woolf "the prince" of essayists and praised by F. W. Dupee for a "whim of iron, cleverness amounting to genius," Max Beerbohm himself noted that "only the insane take themselves quite seriously." Nonetheless, from his precocious 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 life and an essayist whose voice was always and only his own. Here Phillip Lopate, one of the finest essayists of our day, has selected the finest of Beerbohm's essays. Whether writing about the vogue for Russian writers, laughter and philosophy, dandies, or George Bernard Shaw, Beerbohm is as unpredictable as he is unfailingly witty and wise. As Lopate writes, "Today...it becomes all the more necessary to ponder how Beerbohm performed the delicate operation of displaying so much personality without lapsing into sticky confession."