Kaye & Ward, Hardback, 1973.
8vo. 320 pp. Revised and Extended edition.
8vo. 320 pp. Revised and Extended edition.
Section
A:
Books and Pamphlets by W. Somerset Maugham
We may start with the total.
There are many places on the Web where you can find the preposterous statement
that Maugham wrote 78 books. Since Mr Stott's bibliography has a first section
with exactly 78 entries, the rumour probably originated with him. It is quite
untrue and the bibliographer is indeed to blame.
To begin with, only 69 of
these 78 are unique works. The rest consists of previously published short
stories reprinted as pamphlets (A48,
A55, A62), reprinting of a single short story in an anthology (A43), old stuff plus new screenplays
not written by Maugham (A68, A71, A73), works only translated/adapted by Maugham (A75) and, most amazingly, a booklet (A76) sold in the theatre where the
opera The Moon and Sixpence, based on
Maugham's novel but otherwise having no connection with him, was first
performed. None of these works should have been included in this section.
Of the rest 69 works, 24 are
plays and 4 are pamphlets. It is sensible to list them separately, perhaps, but
none of them is substantial enough to be counted as a full-length book. But the
rest 41 certainly are: 20 novels, 9 short story collections, 3 travel books and
9 volumes with essays/memoirs/etc. To these one may add the three volumes of The Collected
Plays (1952, B18), even
though they contain only 18 plays, and two very important post-Stott books that
consist entirely of previously uncollected pieces by Maugham: Seventeen Lost
Stories (1967) and A Traveller in Romance (1984). So, for
lovers of statistics, we may conclude that Maugham wrote 46 books, plus minor
miscellaneous pieces scattered here and there.
So much for the quantitative
analysis. Now something about the quality. We may start with Mr Stott at his
most high-handed:
The notable fact
about Mrs Craddock is that it is the
only one of this author's early novels (with the possible exception of Liza) that is today at all readable.
You are forgetting yourself,
Raymond. You are a bibliographer, not a critic. Needless to say, if one is
seriously interested in Maugham, pretty much all of his early novels are quite
readable, including some dull ones like The
Explorer, The Magician or The Making of a Saint. Mr Stott,
however, is quite right that Maugham's third novel is the first one where
''unexpected flashes of the later Maugham, with his worldly wisdom and uncanny,
intuitive understanding of human nature'' can be glimpsed.
A5 Mrs Craddock (1902). As pointed out by
Norman Moore in the notes to his stupendous collection, the original version of
the novel, with the
omitted
passages restored but also with many new corrections by Maugham, first appeared
in 1928, not in 1937 (TCE). The same goes for the preface which, as mentioned
by Mr Stott, was further expanded for the 1955 edition.
A37 Ashenden (1928). Oddly enough, Mr Stott
gives full contents of the book, but he never makes it clear that in the
volumes with Complete/Collected short stories 15 of the 16 chapters were merged
into the six well-known, and longish, tales. Follow this link for
more info on that.
A60 Strictly
Personal (1941). Mr Stott rightly points out that the English edition
contains a letter to Eddie Marsh (by way of preface) which is not to be found
in the American one. But he doesn't mention the more important fact that the
former edition lacks the whole fifteenth chapter; apparently Heinemann were
outraged by the candid portrait of (presumably) Godfrey Winn and feared libel
issues. The chapter consist mostly of a devastating conversation every bit as
good as a play. The letter to Eddie is not enough of compensation. So if you
must get one edition of this book, get the Doubleday one.
A68 Quartet (1948). This is one of the three
volumes which consist of previously published stories and screenplays not
written by Maugham (with the possible exception of ''The Verger'' from Trio, 1950). Anyway, Mr Stott and I have
apparently seen different versions of the movie ''Quartet''. In my copy, part
of the 3
DVD box available, Maugham's introductions to the four stories, all printed
in the book, are omitted on the screen. Only his conclusion and part of his
general introduction (''In my twenties the critics…'') are retained. Either
these parts of the screenplay were never shot and Mr Stott never actually saw
the movie, or they were shot all right but were cut somewhere during the long way
to the DVD release.
(In the other two movies, Trio and Encore, Maugham's introductions are retained as they are printed in
the books, and as pointed out by Mr Stott.)
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