Item 67: Max Beerbohm's copy of Zuleika Dobson (1911)

Julie Carlsen: This is Max Beerbohm’s copy of his only novel, Zuleika Dobson, and to me, it's one of the most exciting things in the exhibition. This is one of Max Beerbohm's “improved” books, meaning it was a book that he kept in his library and he doodled over and further caricatured the author or the contents.

What you see here is Max's drawing of the title character, Zuleika Dobson. Zuleika Dobson is a young woman who captured the attention of undergraduate students at Oxford. She's a bit of a vapid celebrity. She's a satire on a satire of celebrity, if you will. She has no real talents, she's not particularly beautiful, and everyone at Oxford is in love with her, and are totally willing to commit suicide because they can't have her love.

Beerbohm was dead set against illustrating novels. He thought that a good enough novel did not need illustration. So, just the fact that he illustrated his own book is a complete wonder. This is probably also why it remained particularly private to him. It stayed in his family for many years after his death, and it now resides at the University of Tulsa and is being shown here in New York for the first time ever.

Throughout the book, he's not only included these types of illustrations—which are: more Zuleika; more self-caricatures; there's one of Zuleika’s mother—but he's also just pasted in little quotes. Some are self deprecating. He's pasted-in newspaper clippings, some of which he's further "improved." And just the whole thing is, it's almost like a bit of a scrapbook. For someone so public, who made himself a character, this is one of his most private items.