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Collected Short Stories, Vol. 4 of 4 (Twentieth-Century Classics)
This final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham’s unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice. The stories range from “The Lotus Eater” where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of “The Outstation” and “The Back of Beyond” in Malaya ...more
Paperback, 464 pages
Published
March 1st 1993
by Penguin Books
(first published 1969)
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Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 4
Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2002.
First published as The Complete Short Stories in 3 volumes in 1951.
First published as Collected Short Stories in 4 volumes in 1975.*
Table of contents:
Preface [written especially for the 1951 edition**:]
The Book-bag
French Joe
German Harry
The Four Dutchmen
The Back of Beyond
P. & O.
Episode
The Kite
A Woman of Fifty...more
Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2002.
First published as The Complete Short Stories in 3 volumes in 1951.
First published as Collected Short Stories in 4 volumes in 1975.*
Table of contents:
Preface [written especially for the 1951 edition**:]
The Book-bag
French Joe
German Harry
The Four Dutchmen
The Back of Beyond
P. & O.
Episode
The Kite
A Woman of Fifty...more
I am not much of a short story reader and yet I enjoyed this much more than expected. It inspired me to rad more of his work. If only I had read more of my assigned reading in high school. :-)
Apart from the racy cover the stories are very developed an poignant. Good material.
Wonderful collection of short stories, the majority of which take place in various locations around the British Empire in Southeast Asia between the World Wars. A warning, though, to those who pick up this book... While there are some beautiful stories in this collection, a whole lot of them can be downright depressing and could even make you a little cynical about love and relationships . . . or it could just make you take a more realistic view of these things. Either way, these stories will...more
this is more of similar stories as in the previous collection that i read and 1 volume in a lifetime is probably sufficient to cover the range . still very enjoyable and waspish .
So I've actually just finished up the Complete Somerset Maugham collection (here http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Stories-S... on amazon) after many many months of picking at the stories, on and off. I'm a huge fan of the hardcover collection - 91 stories between the two volumes. The only part I'd recommend skipping are the half dozen Ashenden spy stories.
These short stories are truly delightful. Maugham manages to create some amazing characters, often in only a few short pages. The stories and the settings are beautiful, sometimes tragic, but always page-turners.
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From Wikipedia: William Somerset Maugham, CH, 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.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset...
More about W. Somerset Maugham...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset...
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“Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-seeker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without — who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? — and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.
And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to me that when in a railway train I have become aware that fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the problem is formidable.”
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8 people liked it
And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to me that when in a railway train I have become aware that fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the problem is formidable.”
“Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently,. They were as happy with their wives as are most married couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but at a rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a club in the vicinity, drank in moderation, and played bridge. They had their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations, their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people.
I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.”
—
4 people liked it
More quotes…
I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.”
