''A Christmas Garland, Woven by Max Beerbohm'' is a collection of seventeen

parodies A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satirical or ironic imitation. Often its subject is an original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can als ...

written by English

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Abril Lamarque (1904–1999) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfre ...

, essayist and parodist

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the theatre crit ...

. It was first published in the United Kingdom in October 1912 by Heinemann and in 1913 in the United States by Dutton & Co. of New York. Beerbohm had a gift for parody, and ''A Christmas Garland'' is perhaps the best collection of parodies ever written in English. In his book Beerbohm parodied the style of popular writers of his day. These were

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Eng ...

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

George Meredith George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. '' ...

John Galsworthy John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. He is best known for his trilogy of novels collectively called '' The Forsyte Saga'', and two later trilogies, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of th ...

G. K. Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English author, philosopher, Christian apologist, journalist and magazine editor, and literary and art critic. Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brow ...

, George Moore,

Edmund Gosse Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood ...

Maurice Hewlett Maurice Henry Hewlett (1861 – 15 June 1923) was an English historical novelist, poet and essayist. Biography He was born at Weybridge, the eldest son of Henry Gay Hewlett, of Shaw Hall, Addington, Kent. He was educated at the London Internati ...

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( ; ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic fait ...

, G. S. Street,

Arnold Bennett Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaborati ...

Frank Harris Frank Harris (14 February 1856 – 26 August 1931) was an Irish-American editor, novelist, short story writer, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day. Born in Ireland, he emigrated to the United State ...

, and

A. C. Benson Arthur Christopher Benson, (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet and academic, who served as the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He wrote the lyrics of Edward Elgar's ''Coronation Ode'', including the words ...

. Beerbohm's parodies of their work are intermixed with a Christmas theme and the inventiveness of his own comic talents.Review of ''A Christmas Garland''
published by Yale University Press When ''A Christmas Garland'' first appeared in 1912 reviewers agreed that Beerbohm had not only captured the styles or "externals" of his subjects but had "unbared their brains and hearts". He seemed to have obtained "temporary loans of their very minds," from which he "worked outwards to the perfect jest."

, the first author parodied, read ''A Christmas Garland'' with "wonder and delight" and called the book "the most intelligent that has been produced in England for many a long day." "A Christmas Garland is surely the liber aureus of prose parody", said

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

. "What makes Max, as a parodist, incomparable – more than the calm mounting from felicity to felicity and the perfectly scaled enlargement of every surface quirk of the subject style – is the way he seizes and embraces, with something like love, the total personality of the parodee. He seems to enclose in a transparent omniscience the genius of each star as, in ''A Christmas Garland'', he methodically moves across the firmament of

Edwardian In the United Kingdom, the Edwardian era was a period in the early 20th century that spanned the reign of King Edward VII from 1901 to 1910. It is commonly extended to the start of the First World War in 1914, during the early reign of King Ge ...

letters."Max Beerbohm Review in "The Modern Library"
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References

External links

Full text of ''A Christmas Garland''
on

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

Turning the pages of ''A Christmas Garland''
1912 short story collections Works by Max Beerbohm British short story collections Heinemann (publisher) books Christmas short story collections {{1910s-story-collection-stub