The Moon and Sixpence - Softcover

Maugham, W. Somerset

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1420951920 ISBN 13: 9781420951929

Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

First published in 1919, W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence” is an episodic first person narrative based on the life of Paul Gaugin. At the center of the novel is the story of Charles Strickland, an English banker who walks away from a life of privilege, abruptly abandoning his wife and children, in order to pursue his passion to become an artist. Strickland leaves London for Paris and ultimately Tahiti, mirroring the life of Gaugin who would also split with his wife to pursue a life of painting eventually immigrating to Tahiti. The title of the novel, which is never clearly explained in the novel, comes from a review for Maugham’s previous work “Of Human Bondage” in which that novel’s protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as “so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet.” The moon in this sense might be seen as the lofty ambition to pursue a life of artistic expression in contrast to the sixpence which represents the security of a middle-class life style with wife and children to which the protagonist abandons. “The Moon and Sixpence” is the story of the demands that can be placed on a tortured artistic soul and consequently the lives that it touches. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

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From the Back Cover

This is the story of an artist who was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of art. In much of its general outline, this famous novel follows the life of Paul Gauguin, famous French post-impressionist painter, but it is not a novelized biography of Gauguin. Rather it is a sharply delineated, carefully wrought "private life", written by one of the most vivid and penetrating contemporary literary masters.

Charles Strickland, the central character, was a stock broker in London. One day, at the age of forty, he left his business, his wife and their children and went to Paris. He had neither money nor prospects. He knew almost nothing of art. But he was seized with a passion to paint and for the rest of his life nothing else mattered to him. He gave up everything to which he had been accustomed for extreme poverty, social ostracism and the freedom to paint. When he finally died of leprosy in Tahiti, where he had gone native, the few paintings which turned up for sale brought only six to ten francs apiece. But he had achieved his desire to create beauty and with the years, the world fully recognized his blazing genius.

About this edition

• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1420951920
• ISBN 13: 9781420951929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158