W. Somerset Maugham
1) The Magician
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Magician (1909) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Controversial for its portrayal of infidelity and occult ritual, The Magician was instrumental in establishing Maugham's reputation as a leading author of the late Victorian era. Inspired by stories of Aleister Crowley, an influential occultist and magician, Maugham crafted a masterpiece of fantasy fiction that would inspire Crowley himself to write a hit piece for Vanity Fair erroneously accusing...
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Language
English
Description
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...
5) Orientations
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Language
English
Description
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...
6) The Hero
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
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.
...Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Pub. Date
2013
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Moon and Sixpence is a 1919 short novel by William Somerset Maugham based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin. The story is told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle aged English stock broker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist.
Author
Language
English
Description
"From a tormented orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever." --
10) The painted veil
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with Charles Townsend, a man whom she finds charming, attractive and exciting. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange but terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages.
11) The razor's edge
Author
Language
English
Description
Larry Darrell, a World War I veteran haunted by his memories of the war, abandons his easy life for first Paris and then a Tibetan monastery.
12) Liza of Lambeth
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Amid the gloomy, grimy world of South London in the 1890s, Liza grasps at the chance to escape the poverty of her life. But even Vere Street has its rules and conoventions and by overstepping them, Liza must pay the tragic consequences.
13) The explorer
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Series
Publisher
Dover Publications
Pub. Date
2005.
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Publisher
Heinemann
Pub. Date
[1961, 1935]
Language
English
Description
On a Chinese Screen, also known as On a Chinese Screen: Sketches of Life in China, is a travel book by W. Somerset Maugham, first published in 1922. It is a series of short sketches Maugham made during a trip along the Yangtze River in 1919-1920. And although ostensibly about China the book is equally focused on the various westerners he met during the trip and their struggles to accept or adapt to the cultural differences they encounter, which are...
19) Mrs Craddock
Author
Publisher
Penguin
Pub. Date
1994.
Language
English
Description
Mrs. Craddock (1902) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Controversial for its portrayal of infidelity and marriage across social classes, Mrs. Craddock was instrumental in establishing Maugham's reputation as a leading author of the late Victorian era. Due to its content, the novel appeared exclusively in Bowdlerized form until Maugham saw it republished in 1938. Bertha Ley has always been independent. Orphaned at a young age, she comes into a sizable...
Author
Publisher
Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc
Pub. Date
1939.
Language
English
Description
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...