Collected Short Stories: Volume 1 [Paperback] [Dec 07, 2000] W Somerset Maugham,W. Somerset Maugham (v. 1) - Softcover

W. Somerset Maugham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099287390 ISBN 13: 9780099287391

Publisher: Vintage Publishing, 2000

Synopsis

International Edition

About this title

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099287390
• ISBN 13: 9780099287391
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544