Book Description
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Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
A generous anthology of fiction by the enduringly popular master Somerset Maugham, featuring in full and for the first time in one volume The Moon and the Sixpence Painted Veil, and The Magician, plus five major stories. From the caf society of Paris to the British colony of Hong Kong to the lush tropical island of Tahiti, you can travel half the world in this first-time-ever collection of three of the novels that indelibly established the popular literary reputation of W. Somerset Maugham in England and America. With him, too, you can explore that perilous territory of the human heart when the ambitions of driven men collide disastrously with the demands of passionate women. In the instant bestseller The Moon and the Sixpence, the novel Maugham famously based on the life of Paul Gauguin, love and art prove to be as incompatible as Europe and Tahiti, when the painter Charles Strickland (played brilliantly in the screen version by George Sanders) sacrifices the love of his wife, the goodwill of his friends, and the life of his mistress on the altar of his own genius. No less exotic than Tahiti is the cholera-ridden Hong Kong in The Painted Veil, which takes the adulterous Kitty Fane on a personal descent into hell in a steamy tale of passion hailed by Bookman as "one of the great short novels of our time." And in The Magician, a satanist takes dark and sinister revenge on the young woman who spurns him. Included in this volume, too, are five timeless short stories-including "The Letter," which was made into a movie starring a memorably murderous Bette Davis, and "Rain," the sultry tale of sexuality and hypocrisy that became a star vehicle for Joan Crawford. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Excellent Collection, an Excellent Writer
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.

Global Tour De Force!
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 fleshedinto 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! ... Read more

Book Description
Maugham’s enchanting tale of secrets and fatal attraction

The Magician is one of Somerset Maugham’s most complex and perceptive novels. Running through it is the theme of evil, deftly woven into a story as memorable for its action as for its astonishingly vivid characters. In fin de siècle Paris, Arthur and Margaret are engaged to be married. Everyone approves and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves—until the sinister and repulsive Oliver Haddo appears. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A Thorough Account.
This biography by Ted Morgan is both excellent and meticulous. Inside we find the life of a writer whose voluminous oeuvre, and length of life, would confound and demoralize a less ambitious person. Maugham was a diminutive, flawed man who created a legend that awes and dazzles to this day. I really think that the biographer should be congratulated on lifting so many threads from so many primary sources that allow us to see so vividly the paradoxical nature of the Maugham's personality. I do believe that Morgan at times was unduly negative in regards to his subject's worth as a writer, however. The fact is that even today Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence, and Of Human Bondage do more than hold up, indeed they are monumental works. I still find them deeply personal and deeply moving. Regardless of his minor publications, and there were many, Maugham is a man for whom we must revere and cherish. Young minds would due well to take note of his artistic integrity and devotion to craft. I found the story of his life inspiring.

Fascinating and FUN
Yes, this is a fun book to read and a delightful look into a complex man, W.Somerset Maugham.I enjoy reading biographies and especially those about Maugham, whose work I admire and read and re-read--especially, Of Human Bondage.I have read many bios of Maugham, including those written by his nephew, Robin Maugham.However, Morgan's very expansive and well dcoumented and researched book is very, very interesting and the best I can recommend to Maugham's fans---and there are quite a few around--still.Gerald Haxton, Maugham's lover, was a fascinating person-someone I would have liked to have known--I think I did know someone like that, thinking it over now.I recommend this book, and do so highly with praise.Great photos as well.

Character Assasination
If you have gotten much pleasure reading the works of W.Somerset Maugham as I have, you should not waste your money trying to find a copy of this book, as I did.Simply put, Morgan's work is a very well researched, poorly written,extremely negative account of Maugham's life.The entire book consists primarily of personal and professional attacks of every type imaginable on Maugham.Absolutely the worst biography I've ever read.

great bio!
What a wonderful book this is!I love W. S. Maugham.I first read his short stories in college and "Home" has never left me.Maugham's words are a great comfort to me and this biography about his life and hisexperiences are absolutely fascinating!Reading biographies is a hobby ofmine, sometimes I do not get passed page 30 due to the horrible boringwords of the biographers, but this book is an absolute delight. It is amust read for ALL Maugham lovers.

The best view of the life and loves of the famous writer.
"Maugham" remains the quintessential biography of this enigmatic figure. The most complete and thorough examination of the life and tramas and adventures that made up the life of the man and the writer. As Morganstates, Maugham is the most popular writer of serious fiction that Englandhas produced since Charles Dickens. Weather that fiction is literature ornot remains to be seen by his fans and by his critics the discussion hasbeen put aside forever. Somerset Maugham is barley mentioned in acadamia.But Maugham had a genius for story telling (Max Beerbohm) and he told morethan two hundred of them in his plays, novels, essays and most admirably inhis short stories. As Alexander Freere said, I you don't think he canwrite, read "The Outstation" or "The Alien Corn" andthen sit down and write a better one. His barroom fight scene in "TheMoon and Sixpense" is superior to anything by Hemmingway and it waswritten six years before "The Nick Adams Stories" or The Torrentsof Spring" were published.Maugham's story is so fantastic thatit is no wonder he was such a good friend of Churchill's. Churchill, ofcourse had an equally eventfull life. Maugham was as famous a playwright inthe teens and the twenties as Neil Simon, but he was also a Doctor anambulance driver on the Western Front and a spy who was given theassignment to try to squelch the Bolshevik Revolution. All in a twenty yearspan during which he wrote ten unsuccessful novels and "Of HumanBondage".He was also the first great world traveller author withthe possible exception of Conrad. Maugham went nearly everywhere one couldexpect to travel during the days of World Wars and steamships. He wroteabout his travels in short stories that are still widely read by many of myfellow travellers along with the first guru tripping novel,"TheRazor's Edge."Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque on the FrenchRiveria was the place he entertained royally. He was a great instructor tohis chef and an innovator of cuisine. He was at various times friends withHenry James, Virginia Woolf, H.G. Wells, Noel Coward and Graham Greene, butthe reason this book influenced me more than any book I have ever read isthe additional cast of characters that I was unaware of before readingMorgan's book. Writers like; Arnold Bennett, Lytton Strachey, AubreyBeardsley, Ruppert Brook and scores of other people whose work I am nowfamiliar with because of this biography.This book has been critizedby many fans for being too rough on the writer. Labeling Maugham a womenhater, cheap, anti semetic, cynical, bitter at being considered a secondrater and a promiscuous Bi-sexual who became exclusively homosexual afterthe age of forty to almost a pornographic obsession. In other words, onlybeing able to enjoy anonymous encounters. All this criticism is unfounded.Morgan paints a sympathetic balanced portrait of a painfully sensitivehuman being who lived through a time that is difficult to judge. I cancount myself as Somerset Maugham's biggest fan and I love women. I havetravelled to many Maugham spots on the globe: Tahiti, Capri, Trivandrum,Pagan and Haiphong. I even visited his home in South Carolina and hiswriters cabin. This is a Great Book. ... Read more

Book Description
Although their settings span a wide geographical area, from the South Pacific to India, Maugham's exotic short stories, novels, and travelogues all, ultimately, focus on the creation of a masculine British identity. In this first book to address Maugham's fiction in light of recent developments in postcolonial, gender, and cultural theory, Holden argues that Maugham's work can be understood as an attempt to negotiate between two alternative masculine identities: those of private homosexual and public writer. Holden identifies Maugham's attempts to cultivate a public persona as a writer whose heterosexuality is confirmed through a process of control of language. Furthermore, Holden illuminates the fluidity of language that Maugham, in contrast to his public persona, associated with homosexuality. The basis of this study is the provocative notion that Maugham's texts, despite their exotic locations, ultimately dramatize a struggle over masculine British identity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Brilliant & illuminating study
Philip Holden's study of Maugham's exotic fiction is masterful, a brilliant analysis of the underlying complexities in terms of gender and imperialism that inform Maugham's texts. This book surpasses many other critical studies which all to often dwell on the obvious and the commonplace. Can't recommend this study more highly. Superb. ... Read more

Book Description
Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image.  Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Well written but not his greatest.
The reason that I read this book was because I fell in love with W. Somerset Maugham's writing style when I read 'Of Human Bondage'. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed to go from 'Of Human Bondage', which is now my favourite book, to 'Cakes & Ale'. From the very beginning I confess that I had difficulty with the storyline. I found myself constantly wondering what the setting was of a scene. I found the character of Roy rather distracting and dull. Despite the fact that the story would not exist if not for his character, I felt that he was of no importance.

The only time that I actually felt myself get interested in the story was when Edward and Rosie Driffield came onto the pages. I enjoyed their characters and the way that they interacted with Ashenden. From the very beginning I liked both of their characters, especially Rosie for her personality.

Although this book was beautiful and so well written I found myself staring down at the pages in awe at times, I did not enjoy it as much as 'Of Human Bondage' and 'The Razor's Edge', which I read directly after 'Cakes & Ale'. I would have to say the only good things about this novel were Edward and Rosie's characters and the last few pages. The one thing that truly turned me against liking this book was the ending. To me it seemed rather abrupt and not at all fitting of the story. It left me cold as the majority of the story did. I was unable to connect with the characters very well, which is something that bothers me to no end. I like to get involved in the book I am reading, feel what the characters are feeling, but there was so little of that here that by the time I finished this book I was admittedly a bit disgusted that I had wasted my time by reading it.

Truth, Art and Artifice
In the late 1920's, an aged literary lion, a venerated late Victorian novelist, Edward Driffield, has died and his widow thinks his life should be written down.She appeals to a younger novelist, Alroy Kear, who had attached himself to their society.In turn, he appeals to a friend who he knows must have known the legend earlier in life.The friend he turns to is the first-person narrator of CAKES AND ALE, Ashenden, also a novelist, who gradually reveals to the reader the truth of the deceased's early life.How much he will reveal to the other characters is another thing, and even if he did, the controlling widow, the man's second and much younger wife, would most likely excise what does not fit the public image she had worked hard to preserve.When it comes to pinning down a protagonist, however, the novel turns on the character of Rosie, Driffield's long-gone first wife.

Several things are going on in CAKES AND ALE. One is the real history of Edward Driffield (whose stature and career bear something of a resemblance to Thomas Hardy, who died in 1928), and the narrator's own interlinked coming of age. Then there is the narrator's scathing look at literary society and the machinations by which critical success and public favor are won.He drops a lot of industry insider jokes, and several actual personages are discussed, but he also returns to the eternal writers' theme of who among them will be read past their deaths.Lastly, the sharp contrast between Victorian life and 20th century existence emerges as a dramatic theme; there is the sense that those with one foot in each culture will never be able to fully absorb the rapid change in mores and fashions.The only figure who floats across the divide is the person who from the outset bucked convention of any kind, Rosie.

Maugham infuses the narrative with a sharp wit and good conversation. It is very shrewd and justifiably cynical about human ambitions and weaknesses. The dramatic story unfolds slowly but with tensions and secrets that keep going until the very end.This remains very satisfying reading 75 years after publication.

The Muse of Youth
In the development from squalling tyke to full-fledged adulthood, human beings tend to gather around them items of media that reflect back upon them their personal conception of the world, in all its myriad forms: music that invigorates the higher spheres, movies that confirm our own view of existence, and authors that speak directly to us, that seem able to give tangible expression to our individual perceptions.For me, reading Somerset Maugham is like diving into the ambivalent soup of my own viewpoint.With his dry wit, penetrating digressions and general psychological understanding of the foibles and frequent inconsistencies of human behavior, Somerset ~feels~ like a fellow brother-in-arms, a voice in the ether, a soulmate artist intoning over the distance of seven decades.It's like reading my own thoughts.Thus have I systematically perused the man's greater works, including his two masterpieces *Of Human Bondage* and *The Razor's Edge*, and returned again and again to the little jewels that fashion the glittering arraignment of his literary crown, being the short stories that are the condensed summation of Somerset's genius perception.Not that the man would agree with that last statement: Somerset considered himself the top of 2nd tier authors, far from `genius' status; and was condemned by critics for his popularity and lack of the experimental drive.Given that he did not delve into the symbolic/semantic abysses of his contemporaries Faulkner and Joyce, Somerset's oeuvre and reputation has remained 2nd tier for the Ivory Tower set, with his focus on `real world' examination paling before the tongue-twisting allegory-riffing of the literary elite.But I'd rather browse the *Collected Short Stories* for the nth time than be rebuffed by *Finnigan's Wake*, the resultant insights of those short stories revealing more in their brevity than anything I could possibly assimilate in the syntax swamp of the Dubliner.

Despite his so-called 2nd tier status, Somerset has survived the literary axe of indifference, gaining stature as the years march on and his works are continually reexamined; and it is curious to read, near the beginning of this novel, the author's alias Ashenden argue with a potboiler-scribe named Roy Kear about posterity - specifically which of their colleagues will endure their current era.Roy Kear claims that that the principle subject of their discussion, a one Edward Driffield, so-called "last of the Victorians", has put a permanent stamp upon the literary zeitgeist.Ashenden/Somerset refutes this with this simple opinion that he finds Driffield's works "rather boring."And later, around the halfway mark of *Cakes and Ales*, Somerset slips from the narrative into a long digression about posterity itself, concluding with the basic idea: "Longevity = Posterity."Driffield, loosely based on Thomas Hardy, wrote so many novels, and lived to such an advanced age, that he outlasted all his competitors and was eventually hailed as a "living genius" by a society desperate for continual applications to the Canon, especially those survivors who could be re-discovered and subsequently championed.If Somerset's theory is correct, then even Stephen King will be considered an essential stone in the Zeitgeist (... "NEVER! NEVER!" I can hear the Bloomites and literati shout, even now) with his accurate reflection of 20th century atmosphere - real-time horrors metaphorically transfigured into cheesy monsters - and, more importantly, by his vast, prolific staying power. Time will tell.

*Cakes and Ale* is a minor work of Somerset's oeuvre, but not insignificant: the author himself stated it to be his favorite work, and I must admit that, like the short fiction, this slender volume contains the essence of Somerset's talent and technique, a condensed viewpoint much easier and overall enjoyable than the emotional torment *Of Human Bondage.*The book concerns itself with the legacy of Edward Driffield, post-mortem; Roy Kears has been hired to write a glowing tribute/biography of the famous author, and he enlists Somerset, who knew the deceased long before his literary fame, to help with research.*Cakes and Ale* is thus a near-sequel to *Of Human Bondage*, as Somerset reflects on his boyhood days - the terrible conformity and isolationism of English villages; his eventual escape therein - a flight aided in part by Driffield and the central pivot of the man's career, his first wife Rosie.Rosie, free-thinking, vivacious and serially unfaithful, inspires Driffield's finest novels and serves as his golden-haired muse.Roy Kears and Driffield's second wife view Rosie as the stain upon the authorial page, the impediment which kept the author from his deserved glory: she is to be reduced as much as possible from the biography.Somerset thinks otherwise, although he is remarkably prejudiced, given his relationship with her; but with the concluding passages of *Cakes and Ale* he gives concrete evidence as to the importance of this wanton Muse, without which Driffield might never have attained his peak prowess.

(A side note: Rosie's character reminds me of Ida, from Graham Greene's *Brighton Rock*, and both can be viewed as an English author's artistic attempt to exorcise the puritan viewpoint of the day about "loose women" in general."Rosie was made to love," Somerset gushes, biased by circumstance but psychologically keen nonetheless).

*Cakes and Ale*: A minor but extremely enjoyable text from one of the greatest observers/authors of the early 20th century.Highly Recommended.

Good, but the least of the 3 I've read
In addition to this, I've also read Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge.This is the least of the three, but still enjoyable.Not as controversial as one might be lead to believe, though I suspect it raised a few brows in its time.Maugham seemed to be big on having women as whores for central characters.Not all the women characters, but there seems like there is always one.This doesn't always mean they are bad people, just real real loose!This title isn't necessarily only for completists.If you are new to him, check out Of Human Bondage.It's his best that I've come across so far.

Well Developed
This is the first book I have read in a LONG time.If you are like me your practical experience with fiction evolved formulated novels (Brown, Clancy, and Ect). Don't get pissy if you like them, I like them well enough but all the books follow the same format.It's like reading the same story, over and over. This book held my attention and I finished it in like 8 hrs, my personal record.The characters develop fast enough and the plot is deeper than you average rock'm sock'm fiction of current.Maugham has an interesting way of giving a person incites in to what makes a person tick.I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys the human condition in all its idocencrisy. ... Read more