W Somerset Maugham Books

Thirty short stories by W. Somerset Maugham including "Rain" which is about a prudish missionary and a prostitute and "The Three Fat Women of Antibes" which is an ironic story about self-denial and greed.

As a writer, Maugham considered himself "on the first row of the secondraters". I think he was being modest. Maugham has written some of the finest short stories ever written. His purpose was to do no more than tell an interesting story, but the reader gets much more. Each story is perfectly told; not one word is wasted, each character is fully realized. Maugham observes and never judges his characters. His short stories can be read many times and with each reading the reader finds something new and interesting. Somerset Maugham's short stories takes the reader to a time that is now past but still very relevant.

Somerset is an amazing writer whose words flowed so freely and expressively it makes you want to cry. This book of shorts is classic Maugham and un-put-downable. You'll love it.

The story" Fall of Edward Barnard" is a confrontation between what is called'the Civilized World' and the indigenous, the savage, the primitive world. Edward, thankful to a relative already fascinated by the beauties of the islands around tahiti, had a one life opportunity to have a very introspective reflexion about the meaning of his life. Sent from Chicago for two years, he will delay his return and the promise he made to his bride Isabelle. Why ? Because facing the natural beauty, almost thunderstruck by such simplicity, he wonders what the use of all this hustle and constant striving in our cities which are all but stones with ceasless turmoil. After a unsuccessful beginning in working, he chose a simple life based on beauty, truth and goodness. His thoughts reach the universal when asking himself ( throughout the author's philosophy ) why do we come into the world for to hurry to an office and work hour after hour

I came to know Maugham through his novels, especially The Razor's Edge, Of Human Bondage, and Cakes and Ale. I purchased this collection not knowing what to expect. The stories are character focused, at times incredibly witty and amusing, at times melancholy and near heart-breaking. As in his novels, Maugham has the ability to make the reader see what is not written. Highlights include The Rain, a commentary on the work of missionaries, and The Pool, one of the saddest shorts ever written. Others, such as The Three Fat Women of Antibbes, will probably make you laugh out loud. A first rate collection.

Very wonderful writing and not that I know anything about the reality but it does seem realistic.

Ashenden was particularly admired by Raymond Chandler, and that is what first interested me in it. It is the story, based on Maugham's own experience, of a British spy in the first world war. The 'story' is more a series of separate episodes, and I can easily imagine why it appealed to Chandler -- as well as the laconic detachment of the writing, there is almost a feel of Hammett here and there, notably the episode of the Hairless Mexican. Much of the action centres round Geneva, a city I personally like, and there is a peculiar fascination in the voyage of the lake-steamer going in and out of the war-zone as it alternates between Switzerland and France. This kind of spy did not have much in common with the heroes of Len Deighton or John Le Carre -- the job reminds me more of how J K Galbraith described the life of an ambassador, ninety percent boredom and ten percent panic, like being an airline pilot. It has its grim side too as you would expect. One of the most memorable pieces is the story of the traitor Grantley Caypor. Some years ago Ashenden was serialised on the BBC, with Caypor superbly played by Alan Bennett. What that production did not even try to reproduce was what happened at the moment of Caypor's execution, unforgettable in Maugham's cold prose.

Worth a read for historical reasons as it is one of (if not the) first modern spy novels. That said, it is very far away from the intricately woven page-turners featuring brainy CIA types bedding winsome females that we tend to think of as being sp novels today. Maugham served in the British intelligence corps in WWI and drew heavily upon his own experiences in writing this book, indeed the epynonymous hero is a well-known writer by profession. Each chapter is almost its own vignette, illustrating some experience or aspect of the intelligent agent's life. The theme is that the agent's life is marked by dullness and inability to know the "big picture." Ashenden is based in Switzerland and undertakes his assignments (none of which involve gunplay or physical prowess) dutifully, yet the reader feels, with a certain ambivalence. There is one especially haunting scene where, for once, Ashenden witnesses firsthand, the repercussions of his actions.

Considered by many afficionados of the Spy Novel genre` as the first of it's kind. Written in 1928, the book is a series of stories loosly connected to reveal the sometimes tedious, sometimes adventureous events in the work of a spy in MI5 during the latter stages of World War I. Maugham is given credit by Graham Greene and Eric Ambler as being their inspiration and Ian Flemming borrowed much from the book, including M who was "R" in Maugham's book. Maugham was given the impossible task to squelch the Bolshivic revolution with 56,000 pounds given to him by the government of Lloyd George and he fictionalizes this in the story "Mr. Harrington's Washington." The story "The Hairless Mexican" inspired Hitchcock to write and direct the movie "The Secret Agent" with John Guilgud and Peter Lorrie. This book to my thinking is one of the hidden classics in literature, written by a writer highly underrated because of his popularity and some of his later works that he did purely for money. A must for lovers of the Edwardian period and those who ever wondered where the Burbury Trench Coat came from.

"Ashenden" by Somerset Maugham is one of the grandfathers of the spy fiction genre. In reality, it's not really a novel, but eight short stories featuring Ashenden, a novelist-secret agent during WWI. Each story is unique, some focusing on the violence and duplicity of the secret world (e.g., "The Hairless Mexican," "Guilia Lazzari," and "The Traitor"). Others are less about espionage than quiet character studies (for example, the final story, "The Sanatorium," has nothing whatever to do with spying, but is set in a tuberculosis sanatorium and--though a it's a bit sentimental--is a brilliant character study of the patients and, in particular, of those who find love in the midst of adversity). I found it deeply touching.

I must admit this the first I've read of Maugham and was impressed with his ability in a single paragraph to get to the very essence of a character (perhaps the best example being his vivid characterization of the funny, but tragic Mr. Harrington in "Mr. Harrington's Washing"). Each of Maugham's characters are distinct and finely drawn.

Maugham at one time analyzed himself as in the first rank of the second rate writers. He may not be Dostoevsky or Cervantes, but he was a fine writer who deserves to be read-I think it's more accurate to say he's in the second row of the first rate writers.

I only found out about "Ashenden" from one of the terrific essays of Michael Dirda (the reviewer for the Washington Post) in which he constantly brings to light lost classics.

"Ashenden" is readable, convincing, and (despite its WWI setting) relevant to the events of today. The secret and desperate world of war and espionage will be with us forever it seems; Maugham's themes are timeless and his writing is a model of clarity.

This is a lost classic that should be read.

The heroine of this book, starts off as a very confident, quite headstrong girl, pursuing a man beneath her station. For when it comes down to it, Bertha is quite the idealist in love. As the book explains she really has only one way to love, and that's all consumingly. The book delves into her heartbreak once the honeymoon is over, and it becomes clear that her husband is one of those very sensible people, for whom love is quite on the mundane side, instead of the fireworks Bertha imagines, it's a little more like clockwork. She, and her marriage are compared to the rules adherant to livestock in her husbands eyes.

And to exacerbate her isolation is the fact that the town and it's townspeople, see in Edward a good, solid, contributing citizen, a paragon of strength, virtues, and good attributes, and congratulate her on her choice of spouse at every opportunity. She goes through stages, as her bitterness and resentment over Edwards' unchangeable personality as he refuses to give way from his sensible lifestyle in order to accommodate her in the attention that she craves. Of such a different temperment is he, that he is completely unable to understand her needs or feelings, and feels it's for her better good for him to remain that way.

The book takes a turn to compare Edward's non-passionate nature, to an admiring younger cousin who falls in love with her with the same heat and emotion as she has, providing just a small glimpse into a world where her feelings are matched. A pervading sensibility, eventually puts her feelings in check. But that experience lowers some of her expectations, and she comes to regard her marriage with an indifference which is the quality that makes it bearable for her.

The story of an unhappy marriage in the rural countryside doesn't strike one as that compelling of a plot-line, but the way in which it's written is so filled with poignant character observations, you can hardly read three pages in this book without finding a sentence that's deeply accurate and deftly serves up truths on human relationships and different temperments. And it's that introspective quality that makes this book amazing to read.

I'm a huge fan of the work of W. Somerset Maugham and I buy every book from him that catches my eye. Mrs. Craddock was not exception. The story of love and disappointment endured by Bertha Craddock is an odissey on how the women perceptions change when they find that they're not loved in the way they expected. Me, as a male, couldn't help but feel sympathy for her and get angry at the way Bertha's husband snubs her need for love. The end is marvelous and this makes the novel a must read for everyone who's ever been in love. (I guess everyone)

W. Somerset Maugham has long existed somewhat on the periphery of literary and critical respectability: "a first-rate second-rater," someone once called him. But the more I read Maugham the more I become convinced that this is a snobbish appraisal, derived perhaps from his extraordinary popular success (if it's popular, it can't be good) and, later, from revelations regarding his homosexuality along with some unpleasant personal details related by various biographers. But none of this should get in the way of a reader seeking out Maugham's best work---"Of Human Bondage," certainly, and the much-less-known "Mrs. Craddock."

"Mrs. Craddock" is a stunningly powerful novel of one woman's compromises with the realities of love. Reminiscent on the one hand of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and on the other of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," this novel has a vitality and brilliance of characterization all its own. Bertha, the heroine, is superbly rendered: a woman who is unable to understand until too late the nature of her emotional folly, a victim of her own self-imposed romantic delusions. Edward, her husband, is equally compelling: a fundamentally good man who has simply, in essence, married the wrong woman. Watching these two mismatched souls attempting to co-exist is engrossing, painful, and exhilarating. The story is solidly written in the usual Maugham plain style, and is just as relevant today as it must have been the year it was published.

This "lost" Maugham novel---ignored even by many Maugham admirers---deserves a wider readership. Those interested in Maugham's fiction of this period, or in turn-of-the-century novels centered on women, owe it to themselves to try this unjustly neglected masterwork.

As a woman you can identify yourself very well with Bertha, but there is a big difference between the social situations. That's exactly what makes this book so special, you see yourself even if the reactions of Bertha are often stupid and wrong you understand what she feels and why she's doing it. You see that maybe in her situation you would have reacted the same way and that makes you thinking About it. There are many little things which tell so much about people's emotions and the situations.

It's a very interesting book. It shows our feelings very well. It's simple to read. But I think it's more a book for women than for men. Mrs Craddock is an intelligent person and she has married a simple man. In the beginning she is very in love with him. And they are lucky. But later she notices that he is not Mr Right and her life gets boring. She leaves him and meets someone else in Italy.... I can recommend this book to everyone which is interested in love stories. But it's not a simple love story with a happy ending!

Referees are usually not good players, critics are usually not good writers, however when an accomplished writer sits down to rate some of the great novels and novelists since the founding of this literary form, results are an amalgam of lucid reading in biography and literary criticism. I managed to read most of the authors listed here over the last 20 years, while avoiding some based on Maugham's take on them. My most favorite is Tolstoy and War and Peace. I would never have had the courage to approach this Russian grand master of story telling but for Maugham's hand holding. It is a pity no other eminent author ever tried to rate another 5 or 10 novelists ever again, like for instance Salman Rushidie's take on Premchand, Tagore, Solzhenytsyn, DH Lawrence, Hemingway and Hans Christian Andersen. That is my wishful thinking. Hope some kind publisher at least resuscitates this out of print book of all times by Maugham for the benefit of all readers of 21st century.

Maugham was so bold to come up with what he considered the ten greatest Novels and their Novelists, that one must be curious about this much courage. In the introduction he explains his stand on "Streams of Conciousness" and therefore eliminates such books as Ulysses, Rememberance of Things Past and Mrs. Dollaway. Also he does not include Middlemarch. But his list is only Ten and although he picks David Copperfield over Bleak House(which is not a great story) or Great Expectations the book withstands the test of time. Tom Jones, Pride and Prejudice, Whithering Heights,Pere` Goriot, etc. The biography of Herman Melville is one of the greatest essays I have ever read and is worth the rest of the book alone. A well rounded intro into the great novels of the world. Madam Bovery, The Red and the Black, War and Peace, Brothers Karamozov and Vanity Fair.

I was expecting a classical (=dull) spy story, with high-tensed action and plot twists, but ended up with a collection of short stories, placed mostly in central europe during WWI. How can it be, that seemingly unrelated stories can be summed up to make a book like this? How little are the hints that something out-of-ordinary is going on? When will the 'action scene' take place?

The book can be read as a collection of short stories, just change the main characters name in a story, but as such it is still not a very easy read. One to add to a collection:'This may or may not have been a true story'.

Look, I love Maugham's writing style and I enjoy historical novels. This one was a no-brainer for me.

Just read it. It's worth it for the brilliant description of his failed affair with the Russian. Who would have thought scrambled eggs could be such a political statement?

Somerset Maugham wrote the most readable, well-plotted, exotic, and interesting short stories of any writer I have ever read. He is frequently described with faint praise as being "competent." Well, if you want formless sketches of the deeper wells of human experience, Maugham may not be your cup of tea. But if you like good stories, often with an trick ending, he's as good as you will find. As a writer for magazines, Maugham understood that he had to get the reader interested in his story quickly, and he does so. Once you get a paragraph or two into a Maugham story, you are hooked.

Volume one of this handsome set is titled "East and West." It consists of 30 short stories written between 1919 and 1930. Volume Two, titled "The World Over" has 61 stories, some of them only brief sketches. Most of the stories have the exotic settings Maugham is famous for: the South Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia. Many of them deal with the British and other Westerners interacting with the Orient and Orientals. The best known and representative is "Rain" in which a missionary takes on the task of reforming a prostitute. A few spy stories, reflecting Maugham's experience in World War I, and tales of the occult are mixed in with the tales of the Orient. It is difficult to single out the best Maugham stories because he is so consistently good.

Maugham pushed the envelope in his day writing of infidelity, inter-racial romance, and incest. In one of his stories "The Treasure" a very proper London gentleman beds his very proper housekeeper with consequences that illustrate English reserve and class distinctions as well as could any scholarly treatise. Maugham is cynical, sarcastic, world weary, and a bit macabre in dissecting society and uncovering seamy, shocking facts about "normal" people.

Not the least of the attractions of these books are the introductions written by Maugham in which he sets out his theories of literature and indulges himself with some biting remarks about his critics. Mr. Maugham was not a very nice man, but he was a great writer of short stories.

Smallchief

In few pages as usual, the great master of short stories, W. Sommerset MAUGHAN, settel up an astonishing story which should be read by all missonaries in the world. Only then, the uselessness of their doctrinal and ideological work, fully devoted to an abstration, could appear to them and save them. Odd enough, the author underlines that the joy of the body is far from being a sin and those who live far that joy would perish from lack of it. All priest's work is linked to devil and the dead od Davidson is a mere denial of all his life. The Rain, which give the title to the story is perceived as the real divinity upon the lava-lava natives of Honolulu, a hymn of life which contrasts to the missionary's thoughts of christianity, a hymn of death and destruction of all living creatures. The end of the story is beyond all that could be expected and I won't tell you..

"Gentleman in the Parlour is a supurb book on Maughams travels in Southeast Asia before the second world war. Anyone who carries with them that sence of romance and adventure of when that part of the world did not have the tallest buildings and the best hotels should take this with them as a travel companion, or just enjoy it in an armchair. The highlights are his detailed discription of his trek to Angor Wat. If the reader doesnt already know that Angor Wat is one of the half dozen great man made wonders will be throughly educated. His discriptions of French Indochina (Vietnam) are particularly vivid. Especially Hue`and Haiphong. There are misfits and opiem eaters and wandering expats as well as the hotels he helped make famous. Raffle's, The Oriental and The Strand. This goes in my backpack with "The Quiet American" and "The Great Railway Bazzar." And I travelled this area in 64,73,86,and97. Also Maugham's "On a Chinese Screen" is worth it.

This is a Great book. A classic of travel writing that provides the dual treat of describing exotic settings and a host of fascinating characters encountered along the way.

Maugham claimed that he was "in the very first row of the second-raters". Maybe, but maybe not.

While his style may not elevate his work to the status of "great literature," you owe it to yourself to read Maugham. This collection is a fine place to start. The Moon and Sixpence is based on the life of Paul Gaugin and The Magician is based more than loosely on Aleistar Crowley's exploits. Fascinating people who Maugham used to craft page-turning stories around.

Maugham is greatly underappreciated. This is a great collection to begin exploring his work.

The ability of this man to put insight within insight into the innermost knooks and crannies of the human condition and then palce you, the reader, almost, but not quite, clautrophobically close to the action (or often a lack of) is literally mesmerizing! He was not a man easily fooled by anyone. He then endows the reader with this insight from which I, for one, leaned a great deal.

Every one of his characters is keenly observed and fully fleshed into often tragic believability but always alive with their human-ness, warts and all.

I miss his stories more than any others when I'm finished. This collection is a global tour de force, rich in colour, intrigue and the dust that setles on the crooked paths his characters tread.

Get it, read it (several times), you won't be sorry!

This book again earns Mangham's default 5 star rating. While not as significant as "Razors Edge" or The Moon and Sixpence", it is far better then "Catalina" or "Up the Villa." In this period piece set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century Maugham iterates and conceives story elements from "Cakes and Ale," "Sanitarium" and Lisa of Lambeth" in telling the story of an incestuous cabal of Bourgeoisie English; exposing their spiritual hypocrisy, internecine conflicts, and narrow minded classicism.

The numerous characters involved and developed is more reminiscent of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" or then the authors previous works with the exception of "Cakes and Ale." However Maugham never gets overly involved with the irrelevant details, rather as master of mood he sets each character up in the first half of the book for a harsh realization of reality in the second half of the book (ala the Merry Go Round). This book demonstrates plausibly the vicissitudes of life. Readers with concrete notions of the way things should be may find this book reflective and/or disturbing. The virtuous sin, the dogmatic get a reality check, and the mighty fall. Classic Maugham. This book is delightful in its revelation of the scope and ambit of frail human beliefs and values.

If you like Maugham books you will like the Merry-Go-Round. There is nothing new here for the Muagham reader as far as themes and characters but it is another wonderful read and another telling statement on the human condition.

This book again earns Mangham's default 5 star rating. While not as significant as "Razors Edge" or The Moon and Sixpence", it is far better then "Catalina" or "Up the Villa." In this period piece set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century Maugham borrow plots from "Cakes and Ale," "Sanitarium" and Lisa of Lambeth" in telling the story of an incestuous cabal of bourgeoisie English; exposing their spiritual hypocrisy, irrelavant internecine conflicts, and narrow minded classicism.

The numerous characters involved and developed is more reminiscent of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" or then the authors previous works with the exception of "Cakes and Ale." However Maugham never gets overly involved with the irrelevant details, rather as master of mood he sets each character up in the first half of the book for a harsh realization of reality in the second half of the book (ala the Merry Go Round). This book demonstrates plausibly the vicissitudes of life. Readers with concrete notions of the way things should be may be shook. The virtuous sin, the dogmatic get a reality check, and the mighty fall. Classic Maugham. This book is delightful in its revelation of the scope and ambit of frail human beliefs and values.

If you like Maugham books you will like the Merry-Go-Round. There is nothing new here for the Muagham reader as far as themes and characters but it is another wonderful read and another telling statement on the human condition.