Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 (Penguin 20th Century Classics) - Softcover

W. Somerset Maugham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140185909 ISBN 13: 9780140185904

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1992

Synopsis

The second of four volumes of short stories which reflect Somerset Maugham's wry perception of human foibles and gift for evoking drama from a sense of time and place. Set in Malaya, America and England, they include "Flotsam and Jetsam," "The Man With the Sca,r" and "The Vessel of Wrath."

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The stories in this collection move from Malaya to the U.S. to England and include some of Maugham?s most famous tales: ?Flotsam and Jetsam,? the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; ?The Man with the Scar,? and notably the opening story ?The Vessel of Wrath,? a tale of the unexpected love between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate.

About the Author:

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) 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). He became a Companion of Honour in 1954. 

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140185909
• ISBN 13: 9780140185904
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432