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The Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham: The Official Position/Mayhew/the Alien Corn/the Verger/Red Home/in a Strange Land
Selections in this Volume:
AN OFFICIAL POSITION To improve his lot, a prisoner in a French penal colony accepts an odious job...and the consequences.
RED This is a poignant love story of youth, beauty and the fleeting moments of ecstasy that pass away only too soon.
THE ALIEN CORN A young Jewish man devotes himself to the pursuit of music over the violent objections of his aristocratic family. As the family wrestles with its Jewish identity, the son flings himself headlong into the Bohemian world of performing artists.
THE VERGER When a lowly verger is fired because of his illiteracy, it turns out to be his lucky day.
MAYHEW A lawyer decides to make a clean break with his past and moves to Capri.
HOME After a lifetime of living abroad, a penniless old sailor finally comes home.
IN A STRANGE LAND While travelling in Turkey, a vacationer meets an extraordinary English woman.
3 cassettes
Running Time: 4 hours 35 minutes
Unabridged
- GenresClassic Literature
Audio Cassette
Published March 1, 2002
About the author
W. Somerset Maugham
1,826 books6,262 followersWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.
Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.
During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
At the time of Maugham's birth, French law was such that all foreign boys born in France became liable for conscription. Thus, Maugham was born within the Embassy, legally recognized as UK territory.
His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.
Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.
During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
At the time of Maugham's birth, French law was such that all foreign boys born in France became liable for conscription. Thus, Maugham was born within the Embassy, legally recognized as UK territory.
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August 2, 2025Team owns Verger, The by Maugham, William Somerset digitally.
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