Editions

Plays Volume One

Plays Volume One

In his day, W. Somerset Maugham was most celebrated as a playwright, and the breadth of his ability is manifested in this collection of his most popular plays. Included here are the noirish mystery The Sacred Flame, the hilarious satires The Circle, The Constant Wife, and Our Betters, and the sharp-witted drama Sheppey. Whether suspenseful or acerbically witty, these plays take a sly look at the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of their time.

Reviews

  • "Maugham has given infinite pleasure and left us a splendour of writing which will remain for as long as the written English word is permitted to exist"

    Daily Telegraph

  • "A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents...precision, tact, irony and total absence of pomposity"

    Spectator

  • "Gripping and entertaining"

    The Daily Telegraph on 'The Letter'

  • "A shrewd, still-relevant examination of women's roles, the nature of love and the manners and mores of marriage"

    Variety on 'The Constant Wife'

More in this Series

About the Author

W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965

W. Somerset Maugham

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