Seventeen Lost Stories by W. Somerset Maugham..Not included in previous editions of his collected short stories and seemingly lost for sixty years, here is a legacy of early tales from the hand of a master who regularly went about the business of writing, raising storytelling to literature and literature to art.
In 1898, when he was twenty-four years old and just embarking on a literary career, Somerset Maugham wrote the first story in this volume, completing the rest in the decade that followed. It is extraordinary, therefore, that to such a marked degree the selection prefigures the best that was to come: the dramatic conception, satirical commentary, and transcendent worldliness that bespeak The Old Party's special touch.
In this collection, too, are tokens of his perennial themes dealing with prevailing customs, dissolving illusions, women, and love, and the often unexpected endings that provide a definite Maugham flavor. If the stories themselves are garnets rather than rubies, they are brilliants nonetheless--gems of distinct excellence and beauty.
