Kaye & Ward, Hardback, 1973.
8vo. 320 pp. Revised and Extended edition.
8vo. 320 pp. Revised and Extended edition.
Section
F:
Check-list
of Works Concerning W. Somerset Maugham
Section
G:
Check-list
of Periodicals Concerning W. Somerset Maugham
Section E is skipped due to
my lack of belief in its importance.
Speaking of my prejudices, I
might mention that Sections F and G will be dealt with in a more perfunctory
manner. The reason is that I would rather read a third-rate piece by Maugham,
full of repetitions, than a first-rate writing about him – and there is
woefully little of the latter anyway.
One point where I agree with
Mr Stott is his rather contemptuous dismissal of the work of Klaus Jonas.
Nevertheless, the addition of a few cross references might be useful.
The World of
Somerset Maugham (F103)
contains the following items from Stott: G61,
F67a, F96 (slightly expanded).
The Maugham Enigma (F87) contains the following from Stott:
F2=F43=G9, F7, F65, F76, G3, G17 (in English), G23, G30, G42, G47, G50, G61, G66, G69, G72.
Various other notes:
· F37. Mr Stott is
correct about the places where MacCarthy's ''The English
Maupassant'' has been reprinted, but he has missed the cross-references: B4 and F85.
· F67a=G69. ''Maugham and
Posterity'' by Glenway Wescott, a ''fine critical study'', is also reprinted in
B16 and F103. There are several slight differences, especially re-arranged
paragraphs, but the piece is substantially the same in both books.
· F79. Somerset
Maugham by John Brophy. In my attempt for a review I
have tried to explain why I don't think this is ''an excellent study of the
novelist''.
· F109. Memoirs of a Malayan Official
by Victor Purcell. Mr Stott's claim that the book ''throws quite a lot of light
on the scandals which undoubtedly gave Maugham the idea for many of his plots''
is perfect nonsense. There are very few references to Maugham and they mostly
show that Mr Purcell had no idea what the writer was trying to do. One is
tempted to use a famous quotation: It's fiction, stupid!
· F120. The Two Worlds
of Somerset Maugham by Wilmon Menard. Mr Stott might have recommended
this excellent study of Maugham the man and the writer. This book does contain
a lot of interesting material about some of Maugham's stories, most notably
''The Pool''.
· [F134a]. This is where Remembering Mr
Maugham by Garson Kanin should have been. For some mysterious reason Mr
Stott doesn't mention this important book.
· F160. Sunshine and Shadow by Cecil Roberts.
This is neither a ''fascinating autobiography'', nor does it contain ''much of
interest on Maugham''. The autobiography is of the dullest possible kind,
listing tons of events with minimum reflection in between, and the only really
interesting moment on Maugham is when Mr Roberts met the grief-stricken author
shortly after Haxton's death. You can find the few lines of it in most of
Maugham's biographies.
Quite a few books on Maugham
have appeared since 1973. Here is a highly selective list. For more
information, together with some annotations, one is directed to Troy James
Bassett's work:
Four full-scale biographies
of Maugham:
These at least pretend to be
scholarly. Here are several books about Maugham that make no such claims:
There are two fine
illustrated biographies, the one by Anthony Curtis is also well-written:
All of the above are mostly
biographical. The rest – except for Samuel Rogal's A
William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia (1997) and A companion to the characters in the fiction and drama of W. Somerset Maugham (1996) – are all critical or
bibliographical studies:
·
W. Somerset
Maugham: The Critical Heritage, eds. Curtis and Whitehead, 1987. Contains G9, 11, 42, 60, 100, 142, 153, and a lot not mentioned by
Stott.
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