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The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1
The first of three volumes of 'The Complete Short Stories'.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
W. Somerset Maugham
2,118 books6,079 followersWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.
Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.
During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
At the time of Maugham's birth, French law was such that all foreign boys born in France became liable for conscription. Thus, Maugham was born within the Embassy, legally recognized as UK territory.
His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.
Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.
During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
At the time of Maugham's birth, French law was such that all foreign boys born in France became liable for conscription. Thus, Maugham was born within the Embassy, legally recognized as UK territory.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 23, 2016
In a word, terrific. I have always enjoyed reading Somerset Maugham and in this multitude of short stories spanning many countries and filling some 500 pages I had nothing but pleasure in moving from one story to another. There are two other volumes of his short stories, but despite my admiration of his writing I will most probably not address Volume Two for another year or so, simply because I have read so much variety and intensity in this first volume that I feel I need a break from his style.
June 11, 2020
Reading this collection of short stories has been a pure delight. Maugham has an extraordinary gift for creating, in very few pages, believable characters of great vitality and depth. His portraits of colonial administrators, planters and natives in the East Indies are especially vivid. You find that you care about the choices they make, and understand why they make them, but sense they are carried along by passions and circumstances over which they have no control. Their ultimate fate seems, at times, inescapable, and you have a strong sense of foreboding as they take each step towards either destruction or release. Thankfully, interspersed among these stories-that-stay-with-you are light literary vignettes, where the principal pleasure is the awkward situation, the nicely turned phrase and the comedic denouement.
I was sorry to reach the end of this first collection, but am compensated by the thought of two further volumes.
I was sorry to reach the end of this first collection, but am compensated by the thought of two further volumes.
February 4, 2019
First read once upon a starry-eyed time, was it early 2014? Those first short story readings unleashed my adoration of almost anything by Maugham. The goods came in the form of old paperbacks, volumes 1 to 3 (or perhaps it was 4). This rereading has been compiled into two full-bodied hardbound books, a boxed set. First edition, no less. Although the box fell part upon opening, I intend to fix it one day.
This rereading cements my love for Maugham's storytelling oeuvre. Like a seasoned chef, he seems to be able to whip up stories of different flavours based on the same basic recipe, all made from scratch, of course.
This first volume contains some of Maugham's shorter short stories--in today's parlance, these would be classified as flash fiction.
This rereading cements my love for Maugham's storytelling oeuvre. Like a seasoned chef, he seems to be able to whip up stories of different flavours based on the same basic recipe, all made from scratch, of course.
This first volume contains some of Maugham's shorter short stories--in today's parlance, these would be classified as flash fiction.
July 9, 2011
Short stories are not quick reads.
The volume I have was published in 1951: the margins are narrow, the typeface tight and each page is dense with reading. After plodding through this collection a formulaic approach to writing these stories is discernible, an approach I had discovered reading Barry Crump's novels; there is attention to detail, a hook and a punch line. Maugham's punch line's have not stood the test of time well and his characterizations are of an age; but the description of the hardships of life in the colonies is excruciating real, "dreich" as my mother used to say. I don't know that any story really stands out; I bought the volume because of the story Louise which tells of the life of a woman labeled as frail when a child, who lived life as a hypochondriac (one is led to believe purposefully by Maugham) outliving three loyal husbands and her devoted daughter. Generally the titles of the thirty three stories are intriguing: The Ant and the Grasshopper, Appearance and Reality, The Three Fat Women of Antibes (a warning for bridge players), The Facts of Life ("Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry." said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich."), The Vessel of Wrath, Flotsam and Jetsam etc.; the last title is the last story of this volume and a most harrowing tale it is but ends:
"It all looks damned fishy to me," he said, "but in the absence of any evidence, I suppose I must accept your version."
She would have given anything to get away, but with that nervous affliction she had no ghost of a chance any longer of earning a living. She had to stay—or starve; and Norman had to keep her—or hang. Nothing had happened since then and now nothing ever would happen. The endless years one after another dragged out their weary length.
Mrs Grange on a sudden stopped talking. Her sharp ears had caught the sound of a footstep on the path and she knew that Norman was back from his round. Her head twitching furiously, her hand agitated by that sinister, uncontrollable gesture, she looked in the untidy mess of her dressing-table for her precious lipstick. She smeared it on her lips, and then, she didn't know why, on a freakish impulse daubed it all over her nose till she looked like a red-nose comedian in a music-hall. She looked at herself in the glass and burst out laughing.
"To hell with life!" she shouted.
A seemingly joyous end to the profound misery that had preceded it, but leaving you wanting to know what happened next; perhaps the sequel is in volume-2.
CJHD
04-Jul-11
Somerset Maugham Haiku
Read Somerset Maugham:
Short stories not a quick read;
catty Black Dog barks.
"Read all about it!"
. . . "SOMERSET MAUGHAM FOR A SHORT
YARN . . . and a slow read."
The volume I have was published in 1951: the margins are narrow, the typeface tight and each page is dense with reading. After plodding through this collection a formulaic approach to writing these stories is discernible, an approach I had discovered reading Barry Crump's novels; there is attention to detail, a hook and a punch line. Maugham's punch line's have not stood the test of time well and his characterizations are of an age; but the description of the hardships of life in the colonies is excruciating real, "dreich" as my mother used to say. I don't know that any story really stands out; I bought the volume because of the story Louise which tells of the life of a woman labeled as frail when a child, who lived life as a hypochondriac (one is led to believe purposefully by Maugham) outliving three loyal husbands and her devoted daughter. Generally the titles of the thirty three stories are intriguing: The Ant and the Grasshopper, Appearance and Reality, The Three Fat Women of Antibes (a warning for bridge players), The Facts of Life ("Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry." said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich."), The Vessel of Wrath, Flotsam and Jetsam etc.; the last title is the last story of this volume and a most harrowing tale it is but ends:
"It all looks damned fishy to me," he said, "but in the absence of any evidence, I suppose I must accept your version."
She would have given anything to get away, but with that nervous affliction she had no ghost of a chance any longer of earning a living. She had to stay—or starve; and Norman had to keep her—or hang. Nothing had happened since then and now nothing ever would happen. The endless years one after another dragged out their weary length.
Mrs Grange on a sudden stopped talking. Her sharp ears had caught the sound of a footstep on the path and she knew that Norman was back from his round. Her head twitching furiously, her hand agitated by that sinister, uncontrollable gesture, she looked in the untidy mess of her dressing-table for her precious lipstick. She smeared it on her lips, and then, she didn't know why, on a freakish impulse daubed it all over her nose till she looked like a red-nose comedian in a music-hall. She looked at herself in the glass and burst out laughing.
"To hell with life!" she shouted.
A seemingly joyous end to the profound misery that had preceded it, but leaving you wanting to know what happened next; perhaps the sequel is in volume-2.
CJHD
04-Jul-11
Somerset Maugham Haiku
Read Somerset Maugham:
Short stories not a quick read;
catty Black Dog barks.
"Read all about it!"
. . . "SOMERSET MAUGHAM FOR A SHORT
YARN . . . and a slow read."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews