W. Somerset Maugham: Collected Short Stories Volume 4Preface
The Book-Bag
French Joe
German Harry
The Four Dutchmen
The Back of Beyond
P. & O.
Episode
The Kite
A Woman of Fifty
Mayhew
The Lotus Eater
Salvatore
The Wash-Tub
A Man With a Conscience
An Official Position
Winter Cruise
Mabel
Masterson
Princess September
A Marriage of Convenience
Mirage
The Letter
The Outstation
The Portrait of a Gentleman
Raw Material
Straight Flush
The End of the Flight
A Casual Affair
Red
Neil Macadam
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) lived in Paris until
he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at
Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St.
Thomas's Hospital with a view to practice in medicine, but the
success of his first novel, Liza of
Lambeth (1897), won him over to letters. Something of his
hospital experience is reflected, however, in the first of his
masterpieces, Of Human Bondage (1915), and
with The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation
as a novelist was assured.
His position as one of the most successful playwrights on the
London stage was being consolidated simultaneously. His first
play, A Man of Honour (1903), was followed by a
procession of successes just before and after the First World War.
(At one point only Bernard Shaw had more plays running at the same
time in London.) His theatre career ended
with Sheppey (1933). His fame as a
short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf,
sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in
1921, after which he published more than ten collections.
W. Somerset Maugham's general books are fewer in number. They
include travel books, such as On a Chinese
Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935),
essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing
Up (1938) and A Writer's
Notebook (1949). He became a Companion of Honour in
1954.
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