Posts
My Maugham Collection Concordance Library (MMCCL)
Happy New Year!As mentioned in a previous post, a project that I have been working on, My Maugham Collection Concordance Library (MMCCL), is going to come live today, as W. Somerset Maugham's works come under the public domain in countries with copyright law that is extended to fifty years after the creator's death.
MMCCL is still in its initial state. I have a significant amount of texts ready to be uploaded, but this is a long process and please be patient. For now, the three p…
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…
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…
Reorganization
Just a short note about the reorganization of the blog. I have cleaned up the pages and reorganized them into Maugham ePortal. This fancy name is for what were previously called the Free eBooks pages, separated by their genres: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Non-Fiction, and Media (videos). Criticism of Maugham and Useful Links (which is dying for an update...) also fall under this category. Their addresses have not changed, so if some of you who have very kindly backlinked do not have to chan…Revised Free Ebooks Page - W. Somerset Maugham
Revised Page - Free eBooks by W. Somerset MaughamThis is a short post with announcement about a significant cosmetic change of my free ebooks page containing free access to W. Somerset Maugham's works.
Some time ago I revised quite dramatically the Free ebooks - Short Stories page, putting the stories in chronological order following their first publication dates.
Finally I found the time to do something similar to the page on novels by Maugham. The Internet Archive and the Open Library p…
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France At War (1940) by W. Somerset Maugham -- First Edition
France At War (London: Heinemann, 1940)France At War is one of the books of propaganda that W. Somerset Maugham wrote during WWII, as a show of patriotism towards his country using the skills he had to make whatever contributions he could.
Besides talking about what this book is about and the first edition, I will also discuss some of the background, without which the reader would have lost a lot of savour of the book.
France At War
The book consists of articles that were originally publishe…
Books and You. A Dissertation Upon Reading - W. Somerset Maugham
Books and You. A Dissertation Upon Reading (London: Heinemann, 1940)Books and You is a collection of three articles serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in February 1939, in them Maugham recommends books that he thinks all should read, using the criteria of readability, enjoyment, and most importantly, profit, that one would have missed something valuable if one has not read them.
In this post, we will look at some interesting points in the book and the first edition.
Books and You - Maugham…
The Summing Up - W. Somerset Maugham
The Summing Up (London: Heinemann, 1938)This post is about W. Somerset Maugham's memoirs The Summing Up. I will record some of my reflections and describe the first edition that I possess.
The Summing Up of An Extraordinary Mind
The first time I read The Summing Up was some years ago. Upon closing the book this time, I experience very different feelings. Maugham has reiterated on different occasions that the most important aspect, or in fact, the sole significance, of an artwork (includin…
The Writer's Point of View - W. Somerset Maugham
The Writer's Point of View (London: The Cambridge University Press, 1951)This post is about a very short book in which W. Somerset Maugham talks about reading and writing.
The Writer's Point of View: Reading and Writing
I mentioned this pamphlet in a previous post. It contains the lecture delivered by Maugham for the National Book League at the Kingsway Hall on 24 October 1951.
As Maugham himself states at the beginning, by then (in his seventy-seventh year) he has said what he has …
Tell Him To Go To The Devil - W. Somerset Maugham
This post is about W. Somerset Maugham's letters to an anxious mother, which later Maugham incorporated in one of his lectures at Kingsway Hall. The lecture was published as The Writer's Point of View (1951).Novelist or Bond Salesman (1925)
Today I read something that first made me roll about with laughter, later calmed me down, subsequently disposed me to listen to good sense and a writer's advice on the art of writing novels.
This article was published in The Bookman, issue Febr…
Purely for My Pleasure - W. Somerset Maugham
Purely For My Pleasure (London: Heinemann, 1962)I will talk about the last book that Maugham published in this post, which is an essay on his collection of paintings, with very good quality illustrations.
Maugham's Art Collection: Purely for My Pleasure
This is truly a delightful book, content-wise and presentation-wise. In it, Maugham writes a short essay, intercalated with the colour reproductions, about the circumstances in which he acquired the paintings shown in this book, including…
Ten Novels and Their Authors - W. Somerset Maugham
Ten Novels and Their Authors (London: Heinemann, 1954)In this post, I will look at the first edition of this collection of essays that W. Somerset Maugham has written about ten authors of his choice. A most remarkable study by Maugham and a very enjoyable read.
Great Novelists and Their Novels (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1948)
This is the title of the first American edition of the collection of the essays on the ten authors, later revised into a much better and extended version …