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4 total works

Cover of The Moon and Sixpence

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.

Cover of Of Human Bondage

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.

Cover of Creatures of Circumstance
Creatures of Circumstance begins with an explanation from the author telling how this collection came about. He states that he "has never pretended to be anything but a story teller. It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude." The short stories in this extraordinary collection-with the exception of one-were written after the close of World War I. Maugham shrewdly and brilliantly exploited the public taste of his time to put on display the changing morality of the twentieth century. An expert storyteller, he was also a master of fictional technique. His fiction offers a synthesis of pleasures in the form of realism, exoticism, shrewd and ironic observation, careful craftsmanship, and characteriation. Among the stories included in Creatures of Circumstance are "The Colonel's Lady," "Flotsam and Jetsam," "Sanatorium," "Appearance and Reality," "The Point of Honor," "A Woman of Fifty," "The Man from Glasgow," and "The Kite."

Cover of "Ashenden" or "the British Agent"
Inspired by Maughams's own experiences as a British secret agent in World War I, this series of stories features a fictional spy, John Ashenden, whose dangerous assignments entangle him with traitors, assassins and beautiful but treacherous women.