The Merry-go-round 1904 William Heinemann

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Record Number	MMC_N_MGR1904WH
Title	The Merry-Go-Round
Creator	W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
Format	Print Book
Genre / Form	Novel
Publisher	London : William Heinemann
Date	19 September 1904
Language	English
Physical Description	p. [iv] BY THE SAME AUTHOR, p. [vi] dedication "To HERBERT AND MARGUERITE BUNNING" & epigraph [from "The Offering" by Laurence Bingyon], 398 pages | 20 cm | Hardback
Identifier - Edition	First edition
Identifier - Cover Colour (Approximate)	#18272B (Mirage)
Identifier - Dust Jacket	None (that I know of)
Identifier - Other Catalogues	Stott A7a
Notes	Maugham mentions the novel in The Summing Up as one of his experiments: I tried various experiments. One of them at that time had a certain novelty. The experience of life I was forever eagerly seeking suggested to me that the novelist's method of taking two or three people, or even a group, and describing their adventures, spiritual and otherwise, as though no one else existed and nothing else was happening in the world, gave a very partial picture of reality. I was myself living in several sets that had no connection with one another, and it occurred to me that it might give a truer picture of life if one could carry on at the same time the various stories, of equal importance, that were enacted during a certain period in different circles. I took a larger number of persons than I had ever sought to cope with before and devised four or five independent stories. They were attached to one another by a very thin thread, an elderly woman who knew at least one person in each group. The book was called The Merry-Go-Round. It was rather absurd because owing to the influence on me of the æsthetic school of the nineties I made everyone incredibly beautiful, and It was written In a tight and affected manner. But its chief defect was that it lacked the continuous line that directs the reader's interest; the stories were not after all of equal importance and It was tiresome to divert one's attention from one set of people to another. I failed from my ignorance of the very simple device of seeing the diverse events and the characters that took part in them through the eyes of a single person. It is a device which of course the autobiographical novel has used for centuries, but which Henry James has very usefully developed. By the simple process of writing he for I and stepping down from the omniscience of an all-knowing narrator to the imperfect acquaintance of a participator he showed how to give unity and verisimilitude to a story" (174).
Subject	Man-woman relationships -- Fiction. Great Britain -- History -- Edward VII, 1901-1910 -- Fiction.
Provenance	Augustana College Library, Rock Island, Illinois
Cost	US$11 in 2013 6s in 1904 | 3,000 copies
Links	Download/borrow Review & analysis