MERRY GO ROUND (Vintage Classics) - Softcover

Maugham-w-somerset-maugham-s

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099288702 ISBN 13: 9780099288701

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

Excerpt from The Merry-Go-Round

With one of her relations only, Miss Dwarris found it need ful to observe a certain restraint, for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had, besides, a far keener wit whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the Speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent Spirit; she looked upon her in fact with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, ap peared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious: it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claims than others to the cov eted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find some one to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. N o cherished Opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire - even her evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, un used to argument, was easily driven into self-contradiction.

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About the Author

W. Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and 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).

W. Somerset Maugham became a Companion of Honour in 1954. He died in 1965.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099288702
• ISBN 13: 9780099288701
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 340