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Maugham on a Chinese screen
Home > Blog >W. Somerset Maugham went to China in September 1919, a trip that lasted for six months. Though he had already travelled widely at the age of 45, it was the first time he set foot on a completely alien culture, the Far East that had fascinated him since boyhood. This experience proved to be fruitful and left him a strong impression. From this trip, Maugham produced 3 works: a play (East of Suez), a novel (The Painted Veil), and lastly, a travel book (On a Chinese Screen).This…
Analysis of East of Suez (1922) by W. Somerset Maugham
Home > Blog >East of Suez stage scene 1, from Basil Dean's Seven Ages
East of Suez. A Play in Seven Scenes. London: Heinemann, 1922.I am at the moment a little bit upset with myself because it seems that with years I haven't grown wiser. Last night I finished reading East of Suez, and I had been all excited waiting for the first free moment to write about it. Industrious as I always am, I went to have a look at Mander and Michenson's Theatrical Companion to Maugham, to see abo…
The Sacred Flame (1928): A Story About Love. Analysis and First Edition
Home > Blog >The Sacred Flame, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928
The Sacred Flame. A Play in Three Acts. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1928.Reading the play The Sacred Flame was a curious experience. I feel sorry that I had some ideas of what it was about, which thus destroyed the suspense, and I can't say whether I would have guessed it right if I were not to know anything about it. However, it wouldn't be possible to discuss the play if I don't talk about what the…
"The Princess and the Nightingale" (1922) – W. Somerset Maugham
Home > Blog >The Princess and the Nightingale, 1922In this post, I am going to talk about a most unusual story among W. Somerset Maugham's works, first published as "The Princess and the Nightingale." It has a curious publication history and is one of a kind in Maugham's œvre. Maugham's repertoire is quite wide. He wrote novels, plays, short stories, essays, criticism, reviews, autobiographies, prefaces, letters to the editor, biographical portraits, screenplays (th…
W. Somerset Maugham's Introduction to Bruno Frank's Stories
Home > Blog >Somerset Maugham on Bruno Frank
Bruno, Frank. The Magician and Other Stories. Introduction by W. Somerset Maugham, The Viking Press, 1946.This post is about an introduction W. Somerset Maugham wrote for a posthumous collection of short stories by Bruno Frank, which has not been registered in published bibliography or collected in other publications of our writer, or at least as far as I know. This piece of writing isn't mentioned in Stott, or collected in John Whitehead&#…
Analysis: "A Woman Who Wouldn't Quit" (1942) by W. Somerset Maugham
Home > Blog >A Woman Who Wouldn't Quit - Somerset Maugham
"A Woman Who Wouldn't Quit." This Week Magazine, 4 January, 1942.I came across a most interesting piece recently, now finally I have it in front of me. A short story written by W. Somerset Maugham called "A Woman Who Wouldn't Quit." You wouldn't find it anywhere else under that title. It was not recorded by Stott, but it was collected in John Whitehead's A Traveller in Romance. Uncollected Wr…
Analysis of "A Traveller in Romance" (1909): A Narrative of Strangeness
Home > Blog >Printers' Pie 1909
"A Traveller in Romance." Printers' Pie (1909): 97-100."A Traveller in Romance," the very phrase must have caught John Whitehead's fancy when he published his volume of uncollected writings by W. Somerset Maugham under the same title. The story was written in 1909 when Maugham was thirty-five, published in quite an unlikely venue: Printers' Pie.Printers' Pie was an annual publication (shortly I will talk more about th…
"W. S. M. : R. I. P.": Alec Waugh on W. Somerset Maugham
Home > Blog >Alec Waugh by Bassano Ltd | Somerset Maugham by Bassano Ltd
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Waugh, Alec. "W.S.M.: R.I.P." My Brother Evelyn & Other Profiles. London: Cassell, 1967. 271–94. Myself, I always felt that he was the one person in the world who could completely understand me. (283) Alec Waugh, whom I mentioned in a previous post when talking about Hugh Walpole and Cakes and Ale, wrote a very sympathetic portrait of W. Somerset Maugham after his death…
"Rain" by W. Somerset Maugham: Analysis
Home > Blog > One of the ongoing projects that I have started is to collect performances of W. Somerset Maugham's plays, which are more robust than I would have imagined.What is on at the moment is an adaption of Maugham's short story "Rain" into a musical by Michael John LaChiusa and Barry Eldelstein, performed at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Several of Maugham's works have been adapted into other genres, such as Liza of Lambeth into a musical, The Moon and S…
"The Man with Red Hair" – Undocumented First Appearance of "Episode"
Home > Blog >"The Man with Red Hair" by W. Somerset Maugham
"The Man with Red Hair." Today's Woman 14.83 (Sept. 1946): 32–4, 132–7.A week ago I wrote about the story "The Kite" and its unrecorded first appearance in magazine Today's Woman as "A Man and His Kite." In this post, I will talk about another, which is even more curious: "The Man with Red Hair."When I came upon the title of this story, I thought it would be a reprint of &…
Unrecorded First Appearance of "The Kite" by W. Somerset Maugham
Home > Blog >"The Kite" by W. Somerset Maugham in Today's Woman Nov. 1946
"A Man and His Kite." Today's Woman 15.85 (Nov. 1946): 23, 114–9Recently I found out that this story was printed under the name "A Man and His Kite" in the magazine Today's Woman, a year before its publication as "The Kite" in the collection Creatures of Circumstance (1947). This is not noted in Stott.Today's Woman wasn't a habitual magazine that Maugham pu…
Up At the Villa (1941) by W. Somerset Maugham – Analysis
Up At the Villa by W. Somerset MaughamUp At the Villa (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1941) It has been quite some years since I first read Up At the Villa. Not one of the more prominent among W. Somerset Maugham's books and I wasn't very impressed by it. Nevertheless, now, after being more familiar with his works as a whole, the novel gives a very different feel.Barely over 200 pages, Up At the Villa is a page turner. It is meticulously constructed and one can see with what ease…
Analysis: Some Historical, Cultural, and Literary References in Mrs. Craddock (1902) by W. Somerset Maugham
Miss Ley (Portrait-statue of Agrippina) in Mrs. Craddock (1902)W. Somerset Maugham
As Mrs.Craddock (1902) was written over a hundred years ago, some of the references that W. Somerset Maugham made in the novel may not be so obvious, and it is interesting to find them out, as I have been doing with some of his other works.
The picture for this post is most probably the portrait-statue that Maugham mentions as the model of his fictitious Miss Ley. For more discussion on this character, please re…
Analysis: Bertha's Tragedy: Mrs. Craddock (1902) by W. Somerset Maugham
Mrs Craddock, 1955, New and RevisedW. Somerset Maugham
Mrs. Craddock (London: Heinemann, 1955)
I am very glad that finally I get to Mrs. Craddock. Note that my reference is not to the first edition. I do possess a first edition, which I will talk about and provide photo shortly. The reason why I put the 1955 edition is simply because it is the copy that I just finished reading, and thus the page numbers will be referring to it. It was some time since I bought this edition and hadn't got time…
Analysis: I Love Me - I Kill Me: From W. Somerset Maugham to James Ward Byrkit
"The Best Ever" by W. Somerset MaughamThis post is going to be a little bit different from the habitual. Instead of focussing on W. Somerset Maugham's works or books that talk about Maugham, it is about thoughts triggered by one of his stories, "The Treasure," which I analysed in a previous post.
"The Treasure" was written as "The Best Ever" in 1933. In it, Maugham portrays a self-absorbed man. Reading it as a modern fairy tale, I bring out the narc…
Analysis: Modern Fairy Tale: "The Treasure" by W. Somerset Maugham
The Mixture As Before (1940) - W. Somerset Maugham"The Treasure." The Mixture As Before. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940. 59–84
Glenway Wescott's high opinion of this short story, "The Treasure," in his essay "Somerset Maugham and Posterity" got me curious to read it again.
Like the last story, "The Back of Beyond," that I talked about, "The Treasure" was first published in Cosmopolitan under a different title, "The Best Ev…
Analysis: Jumping Johnnies, Willie Maugham, and "The Back of Beyond"
Ah King (1933) by W. Somerset Maugham"The Back of Beyond." Ah King. London: Heinemann, 1933. 220-268.
Last night I picked up "The Back of Beyond," a short story by W. Somerset Maugham, originally published under the title "The Right Thing is the Kind Thing" in Cosmopolitan, July 1931. Two years later, it became "The Back of Beyond" and was collected in Ah King.
It is a story with an intricate narrative structure, which teachers of creative writing or f…
Analysis: Photo, Writing, and Ars Rhetorica in "Virtue" by W. Somerset Maugham
Virtue by W. Somerset Maugham"Virtue." Redbook 80.6 (1943): 36–7,80–1.
Do not mistake this "Virtue" with the short story "Virtue" first published in February 1931 in Cosmopolitan, which is collected in Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular of the same year.
This "Virtue" forms part of Maugham's WWII propaganda work, a duty that Maugham felt more and more a burden.
Nevertheless, it is interesting because of a nice photo by George Platt L…
Of Human Bondage – Is It Worth While?
Review of Of Human BondageI came across an interesting old review of Of Human Bondage (1915), published on 18 August 1915, exactly a hundred years ago and five days after the novel came out in Britain, in Daily Telegraph.
It was written by W. L. Courtney and was not selected by Curtis and Whitehead in their anthology of contemporary criticism of Maugham's works, The Critical Heritage.
I don't find W. L. Courtney in the anthology, but in Wikipedia there is a brief outline of who he w…
Analysis: "To lead you to an overwhelming question ...": Points of View (1958) by W. Somerset Maugham
Points of View (1958) - W. Somerset MaughamPoints of View (London: Heinemann, 1958)
Points of View is a collection of essays by W. Somerset Maugham, first printed in 1958, the penultimate work in book form that the author published.
It consists of five essays: "The Three Novels of a Poet," "The Saint," "Prose and Dr. Tillotson," "The Short Story," and "Three Journalists." From what Stott registers, it seems that only "The Saint" was pu…