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…
The Summing Up Limited Edition (1954) – W. Somerset Maugham
The Summing Up (1954) Limited Edition - SlipcaseThe Summing Up (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1954)
In this post I am going to talk about a beautiful book, both in content and as an object, a little present that I got for myself, a very special present indeed. In a moment, I will tell you why.
In a previous post I mentioned another limited edition printed for the celebration of Maugham's eightieth birthday: Cakes and Ale, published by Heinemann, with a special preface and four pages of re…
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…
In Between Purely for My Pleasure (April 1962) and "Looking Back" (June 1962) - W. Somerset Maugham
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one stumbles upon things while one is looking for something else, which jerks one back from a reverie. It is intriguing and disturbing at the same time. This is a brief post just to show a little advertisement on the dust jacket of the first UK edition of Purely for My Pleasure (1962), so that I can stop thinking about it."Looking Back," the very controversial memoirs, first published in three issues in Show in 1962, was several years in the making…
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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…
My W. Somerset Maugham Collection
This is going to be a very personal post. A dear reader of mine has asked me to show a photo of my Maugham collection, so here it is. I have, not strictly speaking, two books missing, one play and one novel. In the early days, I got some volumes that I would not consider now as true first edition, but perfection is an art. Time (and gold, of course) will make up to it.I would consider myself a low brow collector, if one has to categorize. I don't mind battered copies; dust jacket is fanta…
W. Somerset Maugham - 48th Anniversary of Death (16 December 1965)
When my obituary notice at last appears in The Times, and they say: "What, I thought he died years ago," my ghost will gently chuckle. (A Writer's Notebook xvi)W. Somerset Maugham: "Teller of Tales," "Famed Writer," "The Last of the Giants of English Literature"
"In the end a writer is not judged by popular attention but by the worth of what he wrote, and how well it may endure the test of the years," wrote an anonymous contributor in the …
"The Sorrows of Autobiography. Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up" by Roger J. Porter
Porter, Roger J. "The Sorrows of Autobiography. Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up." Self-same Songs: Autobiographical Performances and Reflections . Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. 67-80.In this post, I will look at the chapter on Maugham's The Summing Up in this book on autobiographic writings. I dived straightly into the chapter I was interested in without knowing much about the book itself, taking it as a regular academic criticism. The result, I am sorry to say, is dista…
Looking Back - W. Somerset Maugham
"Looking Back." Show 2.6 - 2.8 (June, July, August, 1962)I have finally got all the issues of the Show Magazine, in which W. Somerset Maugham's last memoirs "Looking Back" was published. This post will be about this very controversial piece of writing.
Looking Back at Eighty-Eight Years Old
It was with apprehension that I opened the magazines... It was truly quite an experience. Maugham left instructions that they were not to be re-published again, after its two serial…
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…