W. Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence

PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE

WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten years old. He was educated at The Kings School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He later walked the wards of St. Thomass Hospital with a view to practicing medicine, but when he had qualified, the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), won him over to letters. Some of his hospital experience is reflected in the story, as well as in his later masterpiece Of Human Bondage (1915). With The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Cakes and Ale (1930), his reputation as a novelist was further enhanced.

A celebrity by the age of thirty-three when he became one of most successful playwrights on the London stage, Maughams Edwardian comedy Lady Frederick, his first hit (1907), was followed by a string of successes just before and then after the First World War. At one point Maugham had four plays running at the same time in Londons West End. His theater career ended with Sheppey (1933).

His fame as a short-story writer began in 1921 with The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, which contained Rain. After initial magazine publication of each story he wrote, there were ten more collections. Somerset Maughams general nonfiction books also reflect his love of travel; they include On a Chinese Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935), essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing Up (1938) and A Writers Notebook (1949).

He traveled widely in the Far East and throughout Europe. His permanent home since before the Second World War was on the French Riviera, which he vacated temporarily in 1940. He became Companion of Honor in 1954 and he died in 1965.

ROBERT CALDER is Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of W. Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom and Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham, which won the 1989 Governor Generals Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Most recently he has written Beware the British Serpent: The Role of Writers in British Propaganda in the United States, 19391945 and A Richer Dust: Family, Memory and the Second World War.

W. SOMERSET
MAUGHAM

The Moon and
Sixpence

Introduction and Notes by
ROBERT CALDER

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First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd 1919

First published in the United States of America by George H. Doran Company 1919

Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1977

This edition with an introduction and notes by Robert Calder published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 2005

Introduction and notes copyright Robert Calder, 2005
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 18741965.

The Moon and Sixpence/W. Somerset Maugham; introduction and notes by Robert Calder.

p. cm.(Penguin classics)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66157-4

1. PaintersFiction. 2. EnglandFiction. 3. TahitiFiction. I. Calder, Robert, 1941 II. Title. III. Series.

PR6025.A86M6 2005

823.912dc22 2005051352

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Book reviewers, once they have taken their fees to the bank, occasionally imagine that their commentaries actually serve to inform and instruct the authors whose work they dissect. More often than not this is a mere fancy, but on at least one occasion Somerset Maugham, who always claimed to be indifferent to the critics, gained from a reviewers suggestion. When Of Human Bondage, which was to become his most widely read book, appeared in 1915, an anonymous review in the Times Literary Supplement observed of the novels protagonist, Philip Carey, that like so many young men he was so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet. On completing his next novel four years later, Maugham adopted the metaphor for its title: The Moon and Sixpence (called first and more awkwardly Sixpence and the Moon in his contract with William Heinemann).

Though this connection may seem to be merely a footnote in literary history, there are significant reasons to consider these two novels together. Even as he was writing Of Human Bondage, Maugham was looking ahead to his next novel, whose plot is briefly outlined in Philips conversations with fellow art students in bohemian Paris. There he learns from his friend Clutton that in Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else had heard of, a queer fellow who had been a stockbroker and taken up painting at middle age, and he was greatly impressed by his work. He was turning his back on impressionism and working out for himself painfully an individual way not only of painting but of seeing. Some time later, Clutton tells Philip that this odd painter is leaving for Tahiti:

He was broke to the world. He was a brasseur daffaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call it in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadnt got any money and did the next best thing to starving.

And what about his wife and family? asked Philip.

Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account.... Hes behaved like a perfect cad to his wife and children, hes always behaving like a perfect cad; the way he treats the people whove helped himand sometimes hes been saved from starvation merely by the kindness of friendsis simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist.