Seven Men and Two Others

The reissue, with a new introduction by Nigel Williams, of Max Beerbohm's (Zulieka Dobson) collection of parodic portraits, Seven Men and Two Others, is a witty and delightful read, though perhaps best suited to Anglophiles. One of the best stories is ""Enoch Soames,"" in which the narrator (Beerbohm himself) witnesses a deal struck between the eponymous mediocre poet and the devil. Soames makes a Faustian agreement to travel a hundred years into the future to see whether his work has been forgotten and finds only Beerbohm's story about him. The vanity of those in the literary life is prominently featured throughout and turns out to be prophetic indeed.