The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - Couverture rigide

Hastings, Selina

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0719565545 ISBN 13 : 9780719565540

Editeur : John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

'excellent...wholly convincing and always interesting...an outstanding biography' (The Scotsman)

'[Hastings] provides a searing emotional history...her closing chapter...is so powerfully written, in places so shocking, as to give a series of physical jolts to the reader. Hastings's book cannot be bettered' (Sunday Telegraph, Richard Davenport-Hines)

'One of the fascinating pleasures of this superb biography [is] to see the veils being stripped away and the messy truth about Maugham's life and relationships exposed...Hastings recounts the mass of detail and the massive literary output with great sagacity and the sharpest of eyes' (The Guardian, William Boyd)

'[Hasting's] superior, marvellously rich synthesis of so many resources...produces a narrative that is strikingly clear yet never reductive. It's a gripping, often sensational account of a singular life, gaining pathos in its closing descriptions of the senile Maugham's manipulations by Searle' (The Independent, Richard Canning)

'The places and people she describes are portrayed with such graphic clarity and assurance. She sets a scene or establishes a personality with great economy and intensity' (The Observer, William Boyd)

'Engrossing...a brilliant evocation' (Financial Times Weekend, Jackie Wullschlager)

'A remarkable book, sympathetic and sardonic, comic and tragic, serious and naughty' (Telegraph Review, Michael Bloch)

Selina Hastings has done an excellent job...Hastings has managed to humanise Maugham without ever attempting to gloss over his defects... Her characterisations are sharp, her judgement sound and her grasp of narrative as sure as her subject's, (Evening Standard)

'Hastings has teased out the complicated chronicle...and offers a fuller picture then ever of [Maugham]' (The Independent, John Walsh)

'The best parts of Hasting's engrossing book are her descriptions of Maugham as a young literary man on the make...a sensitive and sympathetic biography' (The Sunday Times (Culture), Robert Harris)

Présentation de l'éditeur :

'Somerset Maugham? If anybody ever sold their soul to the devil, he did, and with sizzling relish!' Stephen Tennant, in a letter to Hugo Vickers

For nearly sixty years Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was one of the most famous writers in the world, and yet his personal life was largely kept hidden. An enormously successful playwright and the author of over a hundred short stories and twenty-one novels - several of which, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale and The Razor's Edge, are now established classics - Maugham early became an expert at concealment. Predominantly homosexual, Maugham made a disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, although deeply in love with the charming but dissolute Gerald Haxton. It was partly to escape his wife that Maugham undertook the extensive journeys in the Far East that inspired so many of his memorable short stories. A talented linguist, during both world wars Maugham worked for British Intelligence. In between he moved in literary and theatrical circles in London, New York and Hollywood and entertained lavishly at his luxurious villa in the south of France. Outwardly his life was richly rewarding, but privately he suffered anguish from an unrequited love affair and a shocking final betrayal.

Acclaimed biographer Selina Hastings has had access to Maugham's extensive private correspondence as well as to important family testimony, which sheds a fascinating new light on this complex and extraordinary man.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: John Murray Publishers Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0719565545
• ISBN 13: 9780719565540
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 624