Maugham - Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

The Collected Works of

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

(1874-1965)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2017

Version 1

The Collected Works of

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

By Delphi Classics, 2017

Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 9781786560698

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

www.delphiclassics.com

Parts Edition Now Available!

Love reading W. Somerset Maugham ?

Did you know you can now purchase the Delphi Classics Parts Edition of this author and enjoy all the novels, plays, non-fiction books and other works as individual eBooks? Now, you can select and read individual novels etc. and know precisely where you are in an eBook. You will also be able to manage space better on your eReading devices.

The Parts Edition is only available direct from the Delphi Classics website.

For more information about this exciting new format and to try free Parts Edition downloads , please visit this link .

Interested in late Victorian and Edwardian novelists?

Then youll love these eBooks

For the first time in digital publishing history, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of these contemporary authors.

www.delphiclassics.com

Htel de Charost, the official residence of the British Ambassador, Paris Maughams father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer that handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil.

Central Paris, c. 1900

Maugham as a young man

Originally entitled A Lambeth Idyll , this novel was written in response to advice given to Maugham after he submitted two short stories to publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin. Unwin rejected the stories on the advice of expert reader Edward Garnett (a critic and literary editor), but did advise Maugham that if he chose to write a longer piece of fiction he would be happy to receive it.

Maugham therefore wrote his first novel whilst working as a medical intern at St. Thomas hospital in Lambeth, which was to provide rich source material for the story. This time Garnett was impressed by the realistic setting and storyline and Unwin published it in September 1897. For a first novel it attracted a pleasing amount of attention and the respectable initial sum of 20 in royalties.

Maugham described the novel as the story of a nine days wonder in a Lambeth slum and confessed to being influenced by the great authors of realistic novels, such as Maupassant; however, Maugham was also accused of being overly influenced (to the point of plagiarism) by other gritty novels set in the slums, such as Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison, published in 1896. Some themes are bound to recur in such novels descriptions of living conditions, the brutality of relationships, the dangers of living and working in such insanitary districts so the critics that accused Maugham of copying were perhaps being unduly harsh, as his characters and settings are as unique to this novel as they can be. It is tempting to think that the doctor who appears briefly towards the end of the story is a walk on part for Maugham himself in his professional role as a community hospital doctor. In later life, Maugham presented the manuscript for this novel to his old school, Kings School Canterbury, the establishment that was so unflatteringly portrayed in Maughams later novel Of Human Bondage .

This story unfolds over about four months in the late summer and early autumn of 1887. Eighteen-year-old Liza Kemp is a factory worker and the youngest of thirteen children. She lives in cramped, unpleasant conditions with her siblings and her widowed, alcoholic mother. A strikingly attractive, cheerful and sociable girl, who makes the best of her appearance and life in general, Liza is popular with neighbours and local boys alike and it is not long before she receives (and rejects) a proposal of marriage from Tom, a respectable lad, who is besotted with her. Liza is instead drawn to the socially unacceptable an affair with Jim Blackston, a forty year old man, who is married, has several children and a pregnant wife. Their courtship begins right under the noses of their neighbours on a bank holiday outing and develops into a full blown affair after Jim rapes her. This is a gruelling scene which, while not sexually explicit, will more than likely upset many modern sensibilities, but is especially uncomfortable as the rape is the trigger for the start of the affair, not something that ends it.

Liza and Jim continue with their affair, meeting in railway waiting rooms to try to avoid local prying eyes and gossips hardly the grand romance Liza had in mind. Nor does the discretion work, as people begin to talk about them and soon Jims wife finds out. Jim faces strife at home and Liza feels disappointed and trapped. She cannot leave home because of her ineffectual mother and Jim makes no moves to leave home either; Lizas work friend Sarah gives up work and marries a man that beats her and is soon also pregnant and Tom, her former admirer, is less attentive than he was. Jims wife has vowed to do Liza harm when she finds her. Instead of opening up into a brave new life of romance and freedom from societys constraints, the world is closing in on Liza, who is now seen as the neighbourhood reprobate. What will become of her?