Book description
The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England,
and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam',
the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in
the remote rubber plantations; 'The Man with the Scar', and notably the
opening story 'The Vessel of Wrath', a tale of the unexpected love that
grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate. In this
second volume of his collected stories, Maugham illustrates his
characteristic wry perception of human foibles and his genius for
evoking compelling drama from an acute sense of time and place.
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.
