Seven men

the long version

"In Seven Men the English caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm turns his comic searchlight upon the fantastic fin de siecle world of the 1890s - the age of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the young Yeats, as well as of Beerbohm's own first success. In a series of luminous prose sketches, Beerbohm captures the likes of Enoch Soames, only begetter of the neglected poetic masterwork Fungoids; Maltby and Braxton, two fashionable novelists caught in a bitter rivalry; and "Savonarola" Brown, author of a truly incredible tragedy encompassing the entire Italian Renaissance. An ingenious and enduring work of humorous writing, Seven Men is also a shrewdly perceptive, heartfelt homage to the eccentric character of a bygone age."--BOOK JACKET.