W. Somerset Maugham
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English
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Liza of Lambeth (1897) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Written while the author was living as a medical student in London, the Maugham's debut marked an electrifying start to an illustrious career in literature. Controversial for its portrayal of infidelity, domestic violence, and women's reproductive health, Liza of Lambeth is a gritty realist tale that takes an honest look at, the everyday struggles of actual Londoners in a time of celebration...
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The narrator and central figure is Filippo Brandolini. He tells the story of his young-adult life--romance and adventure. Filippo joins forces with friends Checco and Mateo to overthrow Giralomo Riario, who rules over and exploits the town of Forli. Giralomo falls; Checco and Mateo fall; ultimately, Filippo is a wreck of a man, living out his life as a monk, and hoping for the earliest available death. The people of Forli demonstrate a conspicuous...
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While most of W. Somerset Maugham's novels achieved high commercial sales and critical acclaim at the turn of the 20th century, Maugham was also an accomplished short story writer. His stories compiled in "Rain and Other South Sea Stories" describe the beauty and feelings of the South Pacific at a time of British colonization. The most popular short story, "Rain", describes the futile attempts of an English missionary to convert a certain prostitute...
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English
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English novelist, short story writer and playwright, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), achieved incredible success in the twentieth century with the reading public, despite a lackluster reception from literary critics. His simple and lucid style complemented his interesting and highly-developed characters, appealing to readers as much in the 1920's and 1930's as it does today. The works contained in this edition-The Pacific, Mackintosh, The Fall...
5) The Hero
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English
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Many war heroes return from battle to a world that has changed dramatically. In the case of James Parsons, the protagonist of W. Somerset Maugham's The Hero, his family and hometown have remained exactly as they were before he left to serve his country abroad—it is his own outlook and values that have shifted. Will he be able to settle back into his old life and regain the happiness that was once his? Read The Hero to find out.
...6) Orientations
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English
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Xiormonez is the most inaccessible place in Spain. Only one train arrives there in the course of the day, and that arrives at two o'clock in the morning; only one train leaves it, and that starts an hour before sunrise. No one has ever been able to discover what happens to the railway officials during the intermediate one-and-twenty hours. A German painter I met there, who had come by the only train, and had been endeavouring for a fortnight to get...
7) The Explorer
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English
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The sea was very calm. There was no ship in sight, and the sea-gulls were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbled under the feet that trod them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the unceasing encroachment of the waves, were rotten with...
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Several shops are shown. Their fronts are richly decorated with carved wood painted red and profusely gilt. The counters are elaborately carved. Outside are huge sign-boards. The shops are open to the street and you can see the various wares they sell. One is a coffin shop, where the coolies are at work on a coffin: other coffins, ready for sale, are displayed; some of them are of plain deal, others are rich, with black and gold. The next shop is...
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The morning room in the Consular Agent's house at Cairo. The windows are Arabic in character and so are the architraves of the doors, but otherwise it is an English room, airy and spacious. The furniture is lacquer and Chippendale, there are cool chintzes on the chairs and sofas, cut roses in glass vases, and growing azaleas in pots; but here and there an Eastern antiquity, a helmet and a coat of mail, a piece of woodwork, reminds one of the Mussulman...
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The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It is not so often that it is calm and blue. Then, indeed, the blue is arrogant. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown. The billows, magnificently...
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On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols, and Fred, a handsome Australian with a shadowy past. Driven to shelter from a storm on the island of Kanda, the trio meet good-natured Erik Christessen and his fiance, the cool and beautiful Louise. A tense, exotic tale of love, jealousy, murder and suicide...
12) Caesar's Wife
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English
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"Caesar's Wife A Comedy in Three Acts" is a play that combines romance, intrigue, and profound insight into the human condition? Fans of top-notch dramatic writing will appreciate W. Somerset Maugham's Caesar's Wife, which explores an unusual love triangle between a distinguished, older dignitary, his personal secretary, and his much-younger wife.
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A collection of six stories-including the acclaimed "The Outstation"-by the renowned twentieth-century author of the classic Of Human Bondage.
Set in the Federated Malay States during the 1920s, these stories portray the lives of the English living abroad and the clashes that occur with the native Malaysians-and among themselves.
In "Before the Party," a widow who lies about the cause of her husband's death in Borneo is confronted by her family...
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Life in the South Pacific Colonial Islands. Spy for the British Empire, W. Somerset Maugham traveled many times to South Pacific and the Far East. There, he started creating series of short stories about the life of the colonialists and how the remoteness and strangeness of such far-away lands can ultimately destroy the very soul of the civilized man.
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DeAmicitia is about an American art student and English poet living in Paris, and what transpires during their summer trip to Holland.
The Punctiliousness of Don Sebastian tells the story behind the alabaster monument of Don Sebastian and his wife.
Art Fiction is a literary genre in which art is not solely an object, but is a reflection of what is human in all of us. Other examples are:
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Glimpses of...
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English
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Compiled in one book, the essential collection of books by W. Somerset Maugham:
• The Explorer
• The Hero
• The Land of Promise
• The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia
• Liza of Lambeth
• The Magician
• Moon and Sixpence
• Of Human Bondage
• Orientations
• The Trembling of a Leaf
17) Cosmopolitans
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English
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A collection of very short, great stories written for Cosmopolitan Magazine between 1924 and 1929. Once again, Maugham proves himself to be a master of the short fiction form in this brilliant collection of 29 stories which, like so much of his other books, are cosmopolitan in nature and these little gems have a Jazz Era setting.
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The three novels in this collection, Liza of Lambeth (1897), Mrs Craddock (1902), and The Magician (1908), had a lasting influence on the literary world. Their settings are various--ranging from the South London slums through the Kentish countryside to the British expatriate community in early twentieth-century Paris--and yet they have common qualities. In each, the protagonist is isolated from a traditional community and unable to create new personal...
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This compilation contains three complete novels and eight major short stories from the canon of one of the twentieth century's most enduringly popular fiction writers.
From London to Hong Kong, from Paris to Pago Pago, in Samoa or Malaya or on a Tahitian tropical isle, the men and women in this collection of masterfully crafted tales inhabit exotic, mysterious worlds-and at their own peril invade the dark territory of the human heart.
Somerset Maugham,...
Author
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English
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William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.
Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and the orphaned boy was raised in Whitstable, Kent by a paternal uncle, who was emotionally cold. He did not want to become a lawyer like other men in his family, so he trained and qualified as a physician. His first...