Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX
Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his
adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of
his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own.
The Gentleman in the Parlour is an account of the author's
trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong,
Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains
and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea,
Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.
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
