Works concerning W. Somerset Maugham

Waldstein: By far the most comprehensive and authoritative bibliography of Maugham's complete works. It does contain quite a few mistakes and it does tend to be too much collector-orientated, neglecting the contents of the books in favour of their physical appearance. Nevertheless, this is the starting point of any bibliographical research. Supersedes all previous attempts by Mr Stott and others.

Waldstein: The finest critical study of Maugham's complete works. Period.

Waldstein: Lavishly illustrated account of Maugham's plays, their first nights, casts, revivals (in England up to 1955!) and synopses, including generous excerpts from Maugham's own writings. There are quite a few mistakes, though, and some of the research (most notably the years of writing) is largely unfounded. But one must not be too harsh on Messrs. Mander and Mitchenson: their work was published before even the first version of Mr Stott's bibliography (1956), let alone Morgan's biography (1980), made Maugham's life and work much better known. In spite of its flaws, still an indispensable book.

Waldstein: The finest illustrated biography. Magnificent visual journey. Text far superior to Raphael's barbed account.

Waldstein: Nicely illustrated and perceptively written appreciation of Maugham's work. Remarkably prescient for its time.

Waldstein: Recommended not so much on its own merits as on the demerits of the other three full-scale biographies (Morgan, Calder, Meyers). Useful for facts and figures.

Waldstein: "The Skirmishers" by Desmond MacCarthy is a penetrating and brilliantly written discourse of Maugham's pen. Even better than the much more famous "The English Maupassant".

Waldstein: Well-written book by a fellow globetrotter and sincere admirer. Fascinating research into some of Maugham's most famous South Sea stories ("Rain", "The Pool") and excerpts from interviews with Maugham himself. Both, however, must be taken with a healthy dose of cynicism. Mr Menard's research remains for the most part elusively unsourced and he is apt to mix interviews with published writings, sometimes quoted word for word, sometimes dubiously rehashed. Recommended with caution!

Waldstein: Invaluable research tool about the critical reception that Maugham received during his lifetime. Attempt the research at your own peril.

Waldstein: Short but powerful defence of Maugham against the highbrow critics. Contains also a fine piece by Maugham himself, titled "Sixty-Five" and reprinted in A Traveller in Romance (1984), ed. John Whitehead. The booklet also contains excerpts from contemporary reviews of most of Maugham's books and a highly dated Bibliography.

Waldstein: Recommended only because of the photos. Mr Raphael's text is laboriously written and unduly prejudiced. He reads way too much in the same old cliches about WSM. The Mixture as Before - and After.

Waldstein: Decent critical study of Maugham's complete works, today of mostly historical interest as the first more or less complete attempt. Contains some insightful touches on the notorious description "enigmatic" that's often attached to Maugham. Biographically obsolete. As literary criticism, entirely dispensable.

Waldstein: Varied, insightful, touching and hard to navigate collection of anecdotes recorded by Mr Kanin. Light but pleasant read for every admirer of Maugham.

Waldstein: Wonderful photographs. For them alone recommended. Mediocre text, briefly summarising Maugham's life, career and personality in a rather prejudiced manner.

Waldstein: Useful supplement to Stott's bibliography; corrects some of his mistakes, adds important details here and there. Sloppy presentation, though. Errors and inaccuracies abound, the illustrations are hideous. Much too collector-orientated. Often echoes the same silly preconceptions that have been so fashionable ever since Morgan's biography was published.

Waldstein: Pedestrian critical study, often tedious and misguided, but not entirely a waste of time. Some interesting bibliographical details.

Waldstein: This seems to be a decent introduction for Maugham beginners... Mr Stott calls it "a not uninteresting study of Maugham’s work, with some occasional shrewd comments."

Waldstein: Very much to his credit, Mr Calder remains the only one among the four biographers of Maugham (the other three being Morgan, Meyers and Hastings) who has also written a study of his works. This book is not as successful as it might look at first glance. It is limited to the novels, all other works being mentioned in passing, if that. The main argument is compelling but overdone; a lot of far-fetched speculations and quotations from dubious sources further detract from the book's value. Great appendices on Rosie's real foundations and Maugham's spy adventures during WWI, though. For them alone, recommended.

Waldstein: As a first-hand historical account of what Maugham fictionalised in his short stories, this is a terribly fascinating book, written with vigour and wit. As a special insight into Maugham's work, however, it is useless: very few references to him, most of them showing essential lack of understanding what Maugham tried to do in his fiction. Still, highly recommended for those interested in the last days of the British Empire.

Waldstein: Entertaining and very fascinating travelogue. Chapter 5 - "A Beachcomber in Marseilles" - contains the material on which WSM based Strickland's adventures in chapter 47 of The Moon and Sixpence. See also the 1935 preface to the novel in The Collected Edition where WSM, having been accused of plagiarizing Mr Franck's work, admitted his debt and argued that "books of facts are a legitimate quarry for the imaginative writer". Mr Franck's book is available online.

Waldstein: Contains "W.S.M.:R.I.P.", one of the rare instances of posthumously published portrait of Maugham that is warm and worth reading.

Waldstein: Reprints some of the proofs of The Summing Up, together with Eddie's corrections and Maugham's accepting/refusing them. Few other interesting references. Otherwise a dull biography of a remarkable man.

Waldstein: Some interesting references to Maugham (including his "great smouldering eyes" and, consequently, "Ah yes, Mr Maugham, so you had, and I was a little in love with you, sir.") by an actress who starred in some American productions of his plays (The Land of Promise in 1913/14, for instance).

Waldstein: WSM makes a cameo appearance in the character of Gilbert Hereford Vaughan (Gillie), "who was an object of considerable curiosity to several of the guests on account of his phenomenal success in having eleven plays at the same time being performed in London, New York, Berlin, Paris, and every other European city". Online text is available.

Waldstein: It might be interesting to peruse this "biographical sketch" of the authoress of The Limit (1911), a (probably remarkable) woman who was a close friend to both Oscar Wilde and Somerset Maugham.

Waldstein: Contains the first version of "Footprints in the Jungle", apparently reprinted from "International Magazine" for January 1927 (see Stott D67). The first appearance in book form was full six years later (Ah King, 1933). There are numerous minor differences between the two versions of the story. They make for an interesting comparison. Available online.

danielx: Contains "Red", my favorite of Maugham's short stories, in its original version. The review by Waldstein notes substantial changes/ improvements made in the version included in 1921's collection "The Trembling of a Leaf".

Waldstein: Short and useless. Very little new material compared to Morgan and Calder. Literary asinine.

Waldstein: Compassionate and sympathetic account marred by excessive detail and constant harping on homosexual matters.

Waldstein: It seems that the best about this book are the illustrations. Some rare photos here, all reproduced in excellent quality. Reviews by fellow Maughamaniacs are contradictory. After some desultory flipping through, Robin's account of his relatives seems to me unreliable: little is sourced, much is not or seems to come from dubious conversations.

Waldstein: Very useful source of trivia. Worth having only at a very low price. Sometimes sloppy or biased.

Waldstein: Biographical essay that may serve, at best, as a very short introduction for perfect beginners. Nicely illustrated, though.

Waldstein: Based on reviews by fellow Maughamaniacs, this study looks worth skipping.

Waldstein: Nice photos (some of them hitherto unpublished) and several interesting excerpts from Maugham's letters (e.g. his disparaging Karl Pfeiffer's "candid portrait") do not in the least justify the exorbitant price of this book.

Waldstein: Based on a review by a fellow Maughamaniac, I wouldn't venture on reading this one.

Waldstein: Worthless. Grand on description, short on analysis.

Waldstein: Book version of Mr Holden's dissertation which is available free online. I have read only a few pages of it. But it was enough. Proceed at your own risk. Some quotes:

"Both men become actively involved in a collaborative process of interpretation, making sense of the incident, and implicitly making a clear demarcation between their own, objective and specular narration of the embedded narrative and the ungovernable passions of that narrative's protagonists."

"Narration thus provides a vicarious means of experiencing and curbing passions displaced onto the body of the memsahib, while the device of the framing narrative enables the reinscription of a medievalized Malaya in which ruling passions are sublimated, and everything remains in its proper place."

"...Maugham's sexual difference inverts the dyads of the text and threatens to form new alliances at cross purposes to those the narrative enforces... there is a "yellow streak" in the monumentalism of Maugham's short story that even the finest sutures of contradiction cannot close."

"Nevertheless, Chi Seng's discreetly extravagant mime of British couture suggests a potential appropriation of constructions of manliness based upon observation and somatic repression."

Waldstein : Not really worth reading. Compared Mr Curtis' critical study (#2) and illustrated biography (#15), this pamphlet is indeed wortheless.

Waldstein: Now this looks like another of Mr Rogal's exercises in futility...

Waldstein: Contains "Poor Old Willie", one of the meanest essays on Maugham ever written. Edmund Wilson would have been proud to know that His spirit lives on and on.

Waldstein: A parody of Maugham and his life in the Villa Mauresque which is "so much better than anything that W. Somerset Maugham ever wrote himself", if you believe Christopher Hitchens. A nice but unexceptional novel, labouriously written and only vaguely suggested by WSM, if you believe me.

Waldstein : More readable and better researched than Hastings, but appallingly prejudiced and condescending.

Waldstein: Contains "Maugham's Half and Half", an indifferent review of Calder's biography and a lame attempt to provide some fresh insight into Maugham's works.

Waldstein: Contains the legendary review of Then and Now ("Somerset Maugham and an Antidote", reprinted in The Critical Heritage) that used the opportunity to degrade Maugham's writing style and literary position. This book of essays actually contains a revised version of this masterpiece titled "The Apotheosis of Somerset Maugham". It is only this version - and not the early one - that contains the much quoted and accepted as gospel passage describing WSM as a "...half-trashy novelist, who writes badly, but is patronized by half-serious readers, who do not care much about writing."

Waldstein: The shadows were his father, Frederick Herbert, and his uncle, William Somerset. Maybe worth reading. Maybe not. I gravitate towards the latter attitude.

Waldstein: A fine play, but it has little in common with Maugham's original story. The characters are sentimentalised out of recognition.

Waldstein: Full chapter (XXI) on WSM, "a somewhat barbed portrait" according to Mr Stott.

Waldstein: Full, and rather fulsome, chapter on Maugham. Entertaining but not exactly stimulating read. Available online.

Waldstein: Bassett 79: "Offered as a sequel in some ways to his Escape from the Shadows, chronicles Robin Maugham's search for happiness that parallels with his uncle Maugham's similar search. Posits the hypnotist Dr. Leahy as a source for Larry's similar abilities in The Razor's Edge, and recounts visits to the Villa Mauresque, including one with Dorothy Parker." I'm not enthusiastic.

Waldstein: Perhaps the reader of Of Human Bondage doesn't quite need this study?

Waldstein: Decent attempt for a brief critical study. Devoid of both malice and insight. Disgraceful bibliography in the end.

Waldstein: Sensationalist trash. Endless and quite tedious variations on themes like Maugham's social duplicity and hidden homosexuality in his works. Poorly researched.

Waldstein: A selection of contemporary reviews. An inferior version of The Critical Heritage.

Waldstein: Five longish essays on different aspects of Maugham's work. By turns genuinely superficial or deceptively profound, they are seldom convincingly perceptive (Mr Wescott's piece being the only one to fall in the latter category).

Waldstein: Absolute trash! Possibly holds the world record for most cliches about Maugham per page.

Waldstein: The notorious parody of Maugham, apparently written by a much worried friend of the second Mrs Hardy.

Waldstein: Horrible illustrations! Much better get Purely for My Pleasure (1962) if you're interested in Maugham's collection of paintings.

Waldstein: "A fascinating autobiography, which contains much of interest on Maugham" (Stott F161). Nonsense. Extremely boring autobiography that contains a number of brief and superficial references to WSM. The only really interesting moment is when Mr Roberts met the grief-stricken author shortly after Haxton's death; the incident is related in most biographies of Maugham.

Waldstein: A great deal of notoriety surrounds this book. Am scared of reading it.

Waldstein: Apparently suitable only for die-hard fans of Mr Nichols.

Waldstein: Based on reviews by trusted fellow Maughamaniacs, this looks thoroughly unappetizing.