Download or read book Of Human Bondage written by W. Somerset Maugham and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of Human Bondage (1915) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by his experiences as an orphan and young student, Maugham composed his masterpiece. Adapted several times for film, Of Human Bondage is a story of tragedy, perseverance, and the eternal search for happiness which drives us as much as it haunts our every move. Orphaned as a boy, Philip Carey is raised in an affectionless household by his aunt and uncle. Although his Aunt Louisa tries to make him feel welcome, William proves an uncaring, vindictive man. Left to fend for himself most days, Philip finds solace in the family’s substantial collection of books, which serve as an escape for the imaginative boy. Sent to study at a prestigious boarding school, Philip struggles to fit in with his peers, who abuse him for his intelligence and club foot. Despite his struggles, he perseveres in his studies and chooses his own path in life, moving to Heidelberg, Germany and denying his uncle’s wish that he attend Oxford. As he struggles to become a professional artist, Philip learns that one’s dreams are often unsubstantiated in the world of the living. Of Human Bondage is a tale of desire, disappointment, and romance by a master stylist with a keen sense of the complications inherent to human nature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.
Download or read book American Book Publishing Record Cumulative 1950 1977 written by R.R. Bowker Company and published by R. R. Bowker. This book was released on 1978 with total page 1436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Book Publishing Record Cumulative 1950 1977 Non Dewey decimal classified titles written by R.R. Bowker Company. Department of Bibliography and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 1408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ashenden written by W. Somerset Maugham and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2023-01-01T20:46:22Z with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book The Moon and Sixpence written by William Somerset Maugham and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Somerset Maugham written by Jeffrey Meyers and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instinctive and magnificent storyteller, Somerset Maugham was one of the most popular and successful writers of his time. He published seventy-eight books -- including the undisputed classics Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge -- which sold over 40 million copies in his lifetime. Born in Paris to sophisticated parents, Willie Maugham was orphaned at the age of ten and brought up in a small English coastal town by narrow-minded relatives. He was trained as a doctor, but never practiced medicine. His novel Ashenden, based on his own espionage for Britain in World War I, influenced writers from Eric Ambler to John le Carr?. After a failed affair with an actress, he married another man’s mistress, but reserved his greatest love for a man who shared his life for nearly thirty years. He traveled the world and spoke several languages. Despite a debilitating stutter, and an acerbic and formal manner, he entertained literary celebrities and royalty at his villa in the south of France. He made a fortune from his writing--the short story “Rain” alone earned him a million dollars–yet true critical recognition, and the esteem of his literary peers, eluded him. The life of Somerset Maugham, as told by acclaimed biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is an intriguing, glamorous, complex, and extraordinary account of one of the twentieth century’s most enduring writers. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book Black Swan Green written by David Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
Download or read book The Summing Up written by W. Somerset Maugham and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Summing Up" by W. Somerset Maugham. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Download or read book We Need New Names written by NoViolet Bulawayo and published by Reagan Arthur Books. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unflinching and powerful novel tells the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe to America (New York Times Book Review). Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her — from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee — while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own. "Original, witty, and devastating." —People
Download or read book Mrs Craddock written by William Somerset Maugham and published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. This book was released on 2015-01-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Example in this ebook Chapter I This book might be called also The Triumph of Love. Bertha was looking out of window, at the bleakness of the day. The sky was sombre and the clouds heavy and low; the neglected carriage-drive was swept by the bitter wind, and the elm-trees that bordered it were bare of leaf, their naked branches shivering with horror of the cold. It was the end of November, and the day was utterly cheerless. The dying year seemed to have cast over all Nature the terror of death; the imagination would not bring to the wearied mind thoughts of the merciful sunshine, thoughts of the Spring coming as a maiden to scatter from her baskets the flowers and the green leaves. Bertha turned round and looked at her aunt, cutting the leaves of a new Spectator. Wondering what books to get down from Mudie’s, Miss Ley read the autumn lists and the laudatory expressions which the adroitness of publishers extracts from unfavourable reviews. “You’re very restless this afternoon, Bertha,” she remarked, in answer to the girl’s steady gaze. “I think I shall walk down to the gate.” “You’ve already visited the gate twice in the last hour. Do you find in it something alarmingly novel?” Bertha did not reply, but turned again to the window: the scene in the last two hours had fixed itself upon her mind with monotonous accuracy. “What are you thinking about, Aunt Polly?” she asked suddenly, turning back to her aunt and catching the eyes fixed upon her. “I was thinking that one must be very penetrative to discover a woman’s emotions from the view of her back hair.” Bertha laughed: “I don’t think I have any emotions to discover. I feel ...” she sought for some way of expressing the sensation—“I feel as if I should like to take my hair down.” Miss Ley made no rejoinder, but looked again at her paper. She hardly wondered what her niece meant, having long ceased to be astonished at Bertha’s ways and doings; indeed, her only surprise was that they never sufficiently corroborated the common opinion that Bertha was an independent young woman from whom anything might be expected. In the three years they had spent together since the death of Bertha’s father the two women had learned to tolerate one another extremely well. Their mutual affection was mild and perfectly respectable, in every way becoming to fastidious persons bound together by ties of convenience and decorum.... Miss Ley, called to the deathbed of her brother in Italy, made Bertha’s acquaintance over the dead man’s grave, and the girl was then too old and of too independent character to accept a stranger’s authority; nor had Miss Ley the smallest desire to exert authority over any one. She was a very indolent woman, who wished nothing more than to leave people alone and be left alone by them. But if it was obviously her duty to take charge of an orphan niece, it was also an advantage that Bertha was eighteen, and, but for the conventions of decent society, could very well take charge of herself. Miss Ley was not unthankful to a merciful Providence on the discovery that her ward had every intention of going her own way, and none whatever of hanging about the skirts of a maiden aunt who was passionately devoted to her liberty. They travelled on the Continent, seeing many churches, pictures, and cities, in the examination of which their chief aim appeared to be to conceal from one another the emotions they felt. Like the Red Indian who will suffer the most horrid tortures without wincing, Miss Ley would have thought it highly disgraceful to display feeling at some touching scene. She used polite cynicism as a cloak for sentimentality, laughing that she might not cry—and her want of originality herein, the old repetition of Grimaldi’s doubleness, made her snigger at herself. She felt that tears were unbecoming and foolish. “Weeping makes a fright even of a good-looking woman,” she said, “but if she is ugly they make her simply repulsive.” To be continue in this ebook
Download or read book The Painted Veil written by William Somerset Maugham and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1925 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kitty Fane's affair with Assistant Colonial Secretary Townsend is interrupted when she is taken from Hong Kong by her vengeful bacteriologist husband to work in a cholera epidemic.
Download or read book Body Soul written by Frank Conroy and published by HMH. This book was released on 1993-09-29 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This saga of a son of the working class who grows into a piano prodigy is “hypnotically readable . . . The best story I know of in a long, long time” (Vanity Fair). As a boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy. Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price—the work is relentless, the teachers exacting—but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy’s own unmistakable and true voice. Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff—an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time.
Download or read book Cakes and Ale written by William Somerset Maugham and published by Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday. This book was released on 1967 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Magician written by William Somerset Maugham and published by Cosimo Classics. This book was released on 1908 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician." -Oliver Haddo, The Magician (1908) by Somerset Maugham The Magician (1908) by Somerset Maugham weaves the occult, good versus evil, and enthralling characters into a spine-tingling tale. Maugham's magician character, Oliver Haddo, is based on Aleister Crowley, a widely known writer, occultist, and ceremonial magician of the early twentieth century. However, the character is thought to be more of a caricature of Crowley than a true depiction. The intrigue begins when Haddo seduces a woman who is engaged to be married and continues with revenge, magic, and murder. This Gothic horror novel is a must-read for those who enjoy flawed characters and a page-turning plotline.
Download or read book The Casuarina Tree written by WILLIAM SOMERSET. MAUGHAM and published by E-Artnow. This book was released on 2023-08-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Casuarina Tree is a collection of short stories set in the Federated Malay States during the 1920s by W. Somerset Maugham. The stories are loosely based on Maugham's experiences traveling in the region for about a year. The strong thread running through the stories is alienation and contrast - between people and cultures. For most of the characters, after a crisis in their circumstances, life seems to take up where it left off and closes over the revelations that brought on the drama. Maugham was considered persona non grata among the expatriate British community in the Federated Malay States following the publication of The Casuarina Tree as he was felt to have betrayed confidences and to have painted the community in an unflattering light through his focus on scandal. The major themes are class division, racial difference, adultery, personal competitiveness, and human nature in reaction to fate. Contents: - Before the Party - P. & O. - The Outstation - The Force of Circumstance - The Yellow Streak - The Letter
Download or read book Points of View written by W. Somerset Maugham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eclectic and illuminating, these essays are the last that Maugham published. Ranging from an appreciation of Goethe's novels, to an encounter with an Indian holy man, with a considered analysis of the form at which Maugham himself excelled - the short story - they present the enduring views and opinions of this eminent writer.
