W. Somerset Maugham

Set in a villa in the hills above Florence, this moving novel reveals the power of desperate love. Mary Panton ignores her desires as she contemplates her loveless marriage, but a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence that destroys her serenity.

Up at the Villa

Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsessi

The Moon and Sixpence

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

The Razor's Edge

Boyali Pece

Il velo dipinto

The Moon and Sixpence tells the story of English stockbroker Charles Strickland, who abandons his wife and child to travel to Paris to become a painter. First published in 1919 in the United Kingdom by Heinemann, the story is inspired by the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin. It’s told in episodic form from a first-person perspective. The narrator, who came to know Strickland through his wife’s literary parties, begins the story as Strickland leaves for Paris. Strickland’s new life becomes a stark contrast to his life in London. While he was once a well-off banker living a comfortable life, he must now sleep in cheap hotels while suffering both illness and hunger. Maugham spent a year in Paris in 1904, which is when he first heard the story of Gauguin, the banker who left his family and profession to pursue his passion for art. He heard the story from others who had known and worked with Gauguin. Ten years later Maugham travelled to Tahiti where he met others who had known Gauguin during the artist’s time there. Inspired by the stories he heard, Maugham wrote The Moon and Sixpence. Although based on the life of Paul Gauguin, the story is a work of fiction. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

İnsanın Esareti

During an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, a Christmas present from his father, Charley Mason encounters Lydia, a woman who will change his life forever, a tragic, self-destructive creature left homeless, fatherless, and displaced by the Russian Revolution, who pines for her distant criminal lover, in a classic novel about the aftermath of World War I. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Christmas Holiday

Maugham's first published novel - a vividly realistic portrayal of slum life. Down among the drab slums of Lambeth, eighteen-year-old Liza is the darling of Vere Street. Vibrant and bewitching, she has found an adoring if conventional beau in Tom. When she meets Jim Blakeston, a married man new to the area, she is immediately magnetized by his attentions. But the streets are wise to their illicit, passionate affair and before long the secret is out.

Liza of Lambeth

'An expert craftsman... His style is sharp, quick, subdued, casual' New York Times Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townsend. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange and terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages... First published to a storm of protest, The Painted Veil is a classic story of a woman's spiritual awakening.

The Painted Veil

Liza of Lambeth (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Theatre

Una villa en Florencia

Една Коледа в Париж

Kitty Garstin, joven y bella londinense, cumple veinticinco años sin haber alcanzado el objetivo para el que fue educada por su madre: hacer una buena boda. Por temor a que su hermana menor se case antes que ella, contrae matrimonio con un bacteriólogo in

EL VELO PINTADO

"Though Aleister Crowley served, as I have said, as the model for Oliver Haddo, it is by no means a portrait of him. I made my character more striking in appearance, more sinister and more ruthless than Crowley ever was. I gave him magical powers that Crowley, though he claimed them, certainly never possessed. Crowley, however, recognized himself in the creature of my invention, for such it was, and wrote a full-page review of the novel in "Vanity Fair, " which he signed 'Oliver Haddo.' I did not read it, and wish now that I had. I daresay it was a pretty piece of vituperation, but probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose." -- W. Somerset Maugham

The Magician

General Press

The Painted Veil, a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maughama, is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, embrace change, and to learn how to love deeply. The title is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet, which begins “Lift not the painted veil which those who live.” ‘The Painted Veil’ is a powerful novel of transgression and redemption. The novel tells the story of the lovely and superficial Kitty Garstin and her unhappy marriage to Walter Fane, a quiet and honorable man. Kitty agrees to marry Walter not because she loves him, but because she fears being put to shame by her younger sister. When Walter discovers her treacherous affair, he forces her to travel along with him to the epicenter of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, the experience completely transforms Kitty and she begins to take accountability for her mistakes, listen to her inner voice and understand her shortcomings.

Presents a collection of stories that are inspired by the author's travels to the Pacific Islands and the Far East.

W. Somerset Maugham

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