Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 (Penguin 20th Century Classics)

As a master of the short story, W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was the highest paid author in the 1930's. He was born in the British Embassy in Paris, on January 25, 1874.

He wrote with a sense of irony and wit. Often, he would express a cynical attitude towards life and his love of traveling found its way into his writing. He didn't confine himself to one genre, but also wrote novels, essays and plays.

His purpose was to entertain his readers, although you do learn the subtleties of human nature from many of his stories. His keen eye for the minute details of life is combined with his writing style in such away as to capture and keep your attention. It is said that due to becoming an orphan at the age of 10, he was shy and tended to be more of a passive observer rather than an active participant. This explains some of the detachment that you feel in various stories.

"I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller. It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. In endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude." (from Creatures of Circumstance, 1947)

In this collection you will find stories that are filled with tales of the South Seas, Europe and America. They are concise and persuasive and evoke a time and place where you completely are absorbed into a story that often has a nice unforeseen twist right at the end. Either you are surprised, laughing, sad life took a certain turn, or very amused.

My Favorite Stories in this Collection :

The Vessel of Wrath: A tale of love between a missionary and a drunken reprobate that has a most surprising ending. It deals with how humans draw foregone conclusions and how people can change for the better.

The Force of Circumstance: Story of almost unavoidable circumstances and deals with the emotions a woman feels when she finds out her husband has had children with a native woman in the village and seems to have neglected to inform her.

The Colonel's Lady: A wife publishes her poetry without her husband's knowledge. He can't understand her or why everyone loves her writing. The reader might not understand him, but might understand his wife's need to express her creativity in her own way as obviously, he is not aware of that part of her life.

The Round Dozen: Amusing and almost unavoidable ending.

These are stories you can read when you have an hour here or there to read a few stories at a time. Some are short enough to be read in 15 minutes or less and are only a few pages long. I enjoyed the slightly longer ones as the character development intensifies and Maugham's powers of observation have time to play out to the full extent.

An escape to another time and place.

~The Rebecca Review

Maugham's style is perfectly suited for short story writing. His facility of communicating all kinds of ideas is truly amazing. Thus his stories feel like a light read, but they also often give you pause--Maugham is trying to pry deep into what makes people think and act the way they do. He wrote his stories a century ago, and the mark of the time lies firmly upon some of them. It is clear that he was influenced by psychological insgihts and ideas that have penetrated intellectual circles of his time. Read these stories for their ease of communication, ideas about human nature, and vivid images, such as those of the South Pacific and the industrial landscape of the rising American giant.

As an avid Maugham fan, I am enjoying this book and am about half way through. I have already read Volumes 1,3,& 4 and some novels by Maugham. He was a great world traveler and when he describes the places he uses in his stories, yoy feel as if you are there along with the characters. Maugham sounds very continental most of the time, but he can surprise you with some idioms and he made me laugh at unexpected moments. One of his very best short stories and then made into a play, then a movie, is "The Letter". The movie with Bette Davis & Herbert Marshall is one of my all time favorites. Also, "The Razor's Edge" - Herbert Marshall plays the part of Somerset Maugham in this one and as I read his stories I hear Herbert Marshall's voice in my head. Terrific casting!

William Somerset Maugham 'Collected Short Stories: Volume 2

On advise of a friend I read the novel Theatre by William Somerset Maugham a few months ago. (see review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... )

The subject, but more over the style of writing impressed me so much that I started to read more by this author, which I knew but so far not really valued. This time a collection of short stories. After close to a hundred years these stories still speak to us, the style, the understanding of human nature, the unique talent.

Let me pick one from the dozens I read. 'The Bum' not one of his all time favorites but therefore the better example. It is about; reading and writing, work and idleness, youth and age, arrogance and tolerance and all that in no more than four pages.
Pages with beautiful sentences like '… I had not half the time I needed to do half the things I wanted …'

An active writer in need of a rest meets a bum '… I have never seen such a wreck of humanity …' Someone he knew more than twenty years ago. Only a boy than and a member of a band of art students and would by writers. He was the most arrogant one and looked down upon the others. '…his vanity was enormous …'
'…I could never have imagined that he was reduced to this frightful misery …'
The bum gives him no sign of recognition and refuses the little help that is offered, choosing to be a bum for the rest of his life? The story offers just enough, the rest is for us to write, the motives and the reasons even a sequel.

Dispense used por Dios, for God – and Somerset Maugham - sees how timid and beautiful we really are, does the writer, does the bum, do we our self …

William Somerset Maugham 'Collected Short Stories: Volume 2

Maugham was a prolific British short story writer from the 1920s and 30s. Although his work is dated and sometimes formulaic, many of his stories are small masterpieces about interpersonal relationships. They continue to entertain contemporary readers and should be sampled for Maugham's genius as a master of the medium.

Maugham is a wonderful writer, especially in this genre. However, you shouldn't order a copy of these volumes from Amazon as there is a great chance that the print will be blurred throughout. I had to return the first copy for that reason and the replacement copy was exactly the same!?

Try another bookseller, it'll be worth it to read all of these volumes.

Blurred print quality. Do not recommend.

Somerset Maugham is one of my favorite authors and have read many of his short stories. Some are light-hearted, some hopeful, some thoughtful. He was a great author - wrote novels, short stories and plays and was wonderful with all.

Mr. Maugham is an excellent story teller who writes about people and events with which he has had full or peripheral experience experience. This standard for authors' works is rare in today's literary offerings.