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Cosmopolitans - W. Somerset Maugham
Cosmopolitans: Very Short Stories (London: Heinemann, 1936).This collection contains twenty-nine short stories written between 1924-1929; as the title states, they are very short. Maugham explains in the preface that they are stories previously published in the magazine Cosmopolitan, whose editor at that time, Ray Long, liked on a Chinese Screen very much and commissioned Maugham to write for his magazine. The short sketches are ideal to fit two consecutive pages with space for illustrations a…
Ah King - W. Somerset Maugham
Ah King (London: Heinemann, 1933)Ah King is a collection of six short stories and the title is not an exclamation. As Maugham explained in the preface, Ah King was a Chinese boy that he had as a servant to look after him during his trip to Borneo, Indo-China and Siam. It is to be a commemoration for the emotion that Ah King, who otherwise was placid and indifferent, showed when they were to part. The stories were set in places in which the two travelled together.
The six stories are:
Footprints …
The Trembling of a Leaf - W. Somerset Maugham
The Trembling of a Leaf (New York: Doran, 1921)This is the second collection of short stories that Maugham published. The copy that I have is from Doran; the first UK edition is from Heinemann, published three weeks after the American one.
It includes the following stories:
The PacificMackintoshThe Fall of Edward BarnardRedThe PoolHonoluluRainEnvoi
This is one of my favourite collections; all the stories are moving and engaging which transport the readers to the Pacific islands that one almost …
The Casuarina Tree - W. Somerset Maugham
The Casuarina Tree (London: William Heinemann, 1926)This is the third collection of short stories that Maugham published. All the stories are related to "the English people who live in the Malay Penisula and in Borneo" as Maugham puts in the preface explaining the choice of the title. The story "The Yellow Streak" contains the detailed narrative of a personal experience of Maugham in which he almost got himself drowned, an experience that he mentioned briefly in other oc…
Orientations
Orientations (London: T. Fisher Unwin), 1899.I do not know how many short stories Maugham wrote all together; as far I am aware, some of them were published in magazines and had been forgotten. I have got all the short stories collections up to Here and There because I consider the last three Quartet, Trio and Encore as repetitions of those that have been included in earlier publications. One problem I found when I was looking for them was the lack of information of the short stories tha…