Penguin Twentieth Century Classics

7 total works

Mrs Craddock

by W Somerset Maugham

Published 1 February 1902

Bertha Ley comes of age, inherits her father's money and promptly marries a handsome, calm and unimaginative man. Bertha is wildly in love with Edward and believes she can be happy playing the role of a dutiful wife in their country home. But, intelligent and sensual, she quickly becomes bored by her oppressively conventional life, and finds her love for her husband slipping away.

Originally rejected by publishers, Mrs Craddock was first published only on condition that certain 'shocking' passages were removed. It was thirty years before the full text could be published.

The Moon and Sixpence

by W Somerset Maugham

Published 1 January 1970

Inspired by the life of noted French painter Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is the story of a rebellious stockbroker. Driven by passion, he decides to abandon civilization and convention in order to pursue his destiny as a painter in the South Pacific. In Charles Strickland, the main character, Maugham gives the reader a penetrating and fascinating study in personality with a savage truthfulness and an icy contempt for heroics and sentimentality.

Of Human Bondage

by W Somerset Maugham

Published December 1952

The hero is Philip Carey, a sensitive and talented orphan with a clubfoot who is raised by an uncaring aunt and uncle. It is the story of Philip's struggle for independence and his pursuit of his art. Often autobiographical, Of Human Bondage is considered to be Maugham's finest work.

Liza of Lambeth

by W Somerset Maugham

Published 12 May 1978

W. Somerset Maugham’s first novel is about the gloomy, poverty-stricken world of South London in the 1890s and how it affects one young girl who tries to escape from it.

The Razor's Edge

by W Somerset Maugham

Published December 1950

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

Collected Short Stories

by W Somerset Maugham

Published April 1969

The fourth in a series of four volumes of short stories, set all around the world - from England to France, Spain and the islands of the Pacific, Malaysia and South East Asia.

Writer's Notebook

by W Somerset Maugham

Published 8 September 1978

From 1892, when he was 18, until 1949, when this book was first published, Somerset Maugham kept a notebook. Part autobiographical, part confessional, this is a collection of Maugham's observations, confidences, aspirations and arbitrary jottings.