Book description
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.
William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he
was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg
University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of
practising medicine, but the success of his first novel,
Liza of Lambeth
, published in 1897, won him over to literature.
Of Human Bondage
, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the
publication in 1919 of
The Moon and Sixpence
his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame
as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with
acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several
short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays,
criticism and the autobiographical
The Summing Up
and
A
Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of
France and lived there until his death in 1965
