Friday 3 August 2012

Enoch Soames

Enoch Soames is a short story by the British writer Max Beerbohm. It appeared in the collection Seven Men (1919) and was originally published in the May 1916 edition of The Century Magazine. It is well known for its clever and humorous use of the ideas of time travel and pacts with the Devil. The story is also memorable for its complex combination of fact and fiction; though the hero Soames is a fictional character, the story is narrated by Beerbohm himself, and contains a written portrait of the real-life artist William Rothenstein, as well as countless references to contemporary events and places.