Volume 37, Number 1 · February 1, 1990
Maugham's Half & Half
By Gore Vidal
Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham
by Robert Calder
Saint Martin's Press, 429 pp., $19.95
A Writer's Notebook
by W. Somerset Maugham
Penguin, 332 pp., $5.95 (paper)
The Razor's Edge
by W. Somerset Maugham
Penguin, 314 pp., $4.95 (paper)
The Narrow Corner
by W. Somerset Maugham
Penguin, 218 pp., $4.95 (paper)
Cakes and Ale
by W. Somerset Maugham
Penguin, 203 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Mr. Robert Calder has written a biography of W. Somerset Maugham in order to redress, nicely, I think, some recent studies of the man who was probably our century's most popular novelist as well as the most successful of Edwardian playwrights. Maugham's last biographer, Mr. Ted Morgan, concentrated morbidly on the incontinences and confusions of a mad old age while scanting works and bright days. Doubtless, he was influenced by the young Maugham's remark:
Review, 9255 words
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