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Cakes and Ale 1954 Limited Edition by W. Somerset Maugham: Prefaces and Hugh Walpole
Cakes and Ale (1954) Limited EditionCakes and Ale (London: Heinemann, 1954)
Yes, another Cakes and Ale...
Before I got this beautiful limited edition for the celebration of W. Somerset Maugham's vulnerable eightieth birthday I already possessed five copies of this delightful novel.
This is the 1930 first UK edition. I got the dust jacket later, from another copy that is in quite a bad shape, stains probably from tea or coffee that had been knocked over it. The catch is evidently that it w…
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…
The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham and References to Paintings
In another post, I talked about the use of art reference as a narrative technique in W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Merry-Go-Round (1904), he did the same in The Magician (1908), which undoubtedly leads Aleister Crowley to include art alongside magic as the subject of the novel (albeit in a sarcastic manner) [1]. I find it extremely interesting to put the paintings beside the passages, and in this post you will see the description or invocation of art in Maugham's novel The Magician.I…
The Merry-Go-Round by W. Somerset Maugham and References to Paintings
When I was reading The Merry-Go-Round (1904) I noticed that Maugham often referred to paintings in order to describe his characters. I thought it would be interesting to put them side by side with the passages, so may be we could visualize what Maugham had in mind when he made these art references in his novel.Art References and The Merry-Go-Round
Well, this is not exactly a painting... "Mrs. Castillyon was a vivacious creature, small and dainty like a shepherdess in Dresden china, excita…
Maugham the Art Collector
Mander, Raymond, and Joe Mitchenson. The Artist and the Theatre. The Story of the Paintings Collected and Presented to the National Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham. London: Heinemann, 1955.This post is about a catalogue of one of Maugham's art collections: the theatrical pictures that he donated to the National Theatre. This impressive art collection seemed to have finally found their home, though unfortunately, not as Maugham would have wished, the collection was dispersed, albeit all in B…
The Moon and Sixpence Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele and Paul Gauguin - W. Somerset Maugham
Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele and Paul Gauguin By W. Somerset Maugham The Moon and Sixpence (New York: The Heritage Press, 1941)I just got hold of this beautiful illustrated edition of The Moon and Sixpence. In the catalogue online when I bought it it was dated as 1919, which is not accurate, since it is published in 1941. At first I thought that it could be an earlier edition than the one mentioned in Stott.
Besides the main text, at the beginning a series of correspondence is included as…