Liza of Lambeth

by W. Somerset Maugham

Overview

LIZA OF LAMBETH is Maugham's first novel, and such is its power that it remains as vital today as when first written. Liza is a warm-hearted young girl, stifled by life in a London tenement.

Liza has been bred to it and externally can cope. But the heart is the problem: it craves love and affection.

"A fine book...shows all the promise of the author's later stories." (Editorial Reviews)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633554429
Publisher:	Start Classics
Publication date:	01/08/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	308 KB

About the Author

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital with a view to practice in medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), won him over to letters. Something of his hospital experience is reflected, however, in the first of his masterpieces, Of Human Bondage (1915), and with The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation as a novelist was assured.

His position as one of the most successful playwrights on the London stage was being consolidated simultaneously. His first play, A Man of Honour (1903), was followed by a procession of successes just before and after the First World War. (At one point only Bernard Shaw had more plays running at the same time in London.) His theatre career ended with Sheppey (1933). His fame as a short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections.

W. Somerset Maugham's general books are fewer in number. They include travel books, such as On a Chinese Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935), essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer's Notebook (1949). He became a Companion of Honour in 1954.    

What People are Saying About This

George Orwell

I believe the modern writer who influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire more intensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

Editorial Reviews

"The modern writer who has influenced me the most." - George Orwell

"One of my favourite writers." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"A writer of great dedication." - Graham Greene

From the Publisher