Cakes and Ale, The Painted Veil, Liza of Lambeth, Razor’s Edge, Theatre, The Moon and Sixpence

William Somerset Maugham was on of the most popular writers of the 20th century and his novels have taken their place as established classics of English Literature. Lisa of Lambeth was his first novel (1897) and is a brilliant and harshly realistic portrait of contemporary Cockney London. Written much later, Theatre (1937) also demonstrates Maugham’s love of London and the West End life. In Cakes and Ale (1930), Rosie, a former barmaid, is the irresistibly affectionate and artless character at the centre of a circle of literary lions, who were considered by Maugham’s irate contemporaries to be caricatures of Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole.

The revolt of the individual against conventional social values and customs is Maugham’s principle preoccupation in the other three novels. In The Moon and Sixpence (1919), George Strickland, a middle-aged businessman, throws up family and career to pursue and obsession for painting. He lives in Paris before obeying the dictates of his art and travelling first to the South of France and then to his death in Tahiti.

A young American in The Razor’s Edge (1944) likewise abandons a promising career and travels extensively searching for peace of mind. The Painted Veil (1925) is a passionate tale of a young wife’s infidelity. Her husband forces her to give up her lover and follow him to China where eventually she finds fulfilment and a greater happiness working with the stricken inhabitants of a cholera-ridden city.