Maugham: Collected Short Stories Vol. 2 : Volume 2

by Maugham, W. Somerset

• ISBN13: 9780140185904
• ISBN10: 0140185909
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-04-15
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Collects all of the stories the author wanted to preserve, providing a rich view of his prolific talent, wide-ranging views, and engaging style

Author Biography

W. Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital with a view to practice in medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), won him over to letters. Something of his hospital experience is reflected, however, in the first of his masterpieces, Of Human Bondage (1915), and with The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation as a novelist was assured.

His position as one of the most successful playwrights on the London stage was being consolidated simultaneously. His first play, A Man of Honour (1903), was followed by a procession of successes just before and after the First World War. (At one point only Bernard Shaw had more plays running at the same time in London.) His theatre career ended with Sheppey (1933).

His fame as a short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections.

W. Somerset Maugham's general books are fewer in number. They include travel books, such as On a Chinese Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935), essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer's Notebook (1949).

W. Somerset Maugham became a Companion of Honour in 1954. He died in 1965.

Table of Contents

Preface	7	(2)
The Vessel of Wrath	9	(33)
The Force of Circumstance	42	(23)
Flotsam and Jetsam	65	(22)
The Alien Corn	87	(34)
The Creative Impulse	121	(30)
Virtue	151	(32)
The Man With The Scar	183	(4)
The Closed Shop	187	(8)
The Bum	195	(7)
The Dream	202	(4)
The Treasure	206	(14)
The Colonel's Lady	220	(16)
Lord Mountdrago	236	(21)
The Social Sense	257	(7)
The Verger	264	(7)
In a Strange Land	271	(4)
The Taipan	275	(6)
The Consul	281	(5)
A Friend in Need	286	(5)
The Round Dozen	291	(23)
The Human Element	314	(32)
Jane	346	(23)
Footprints in the Jungle	369	(27)
The Door of Opportunity	396