Maugham reworks this story into The Merry-Go-Round, published as a novel a year later, with more intricate plots and more characters. The emotions of Basil, Jenny, and Mrs. Murray are more developed in the novel, as the length allows. Then, the…
Note that this copy doesn't have square bracket enclosing "All rights reserved" and thus isn't the first issue that Stott talks about. He does mention that there are copies, like this one, with this variant, but can't be certain when they come into…
"To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, which first appeared in September, 1897, this edition of 1,000 copies, numbered and signed by the author has been printed and made" (dust jacket front flap).
When Mrs. Craddock's manuscript was sent to Heinemann it was rejected for indecency. It was refused by many publishers until it went to Robertson Nicoll. He saw its potentials, but didn't think it was the type of book published by his firm, Hodder &…
This belongs to Heinemann's pocket edition, which, according to Stott, was scarce in his time. There are all together 16 volumes. They were published more or less at the same time of the Collected Edition, and are supposedly smaller and cheaper. The…
From the front flap of the dust jacket:
"Mr Somerset Maugham has written a Preface to this new edition of his second novel, Mrs. Craddock, which has not been in print for many years.
"He wrote it in 1900, he explains, and because it was thought…
800 copies as first editions were printed, among which 500 were signed. These represent the first state. The remaining 300 were printed later, with a stub for the colophon.
I bought the programme together with this copy, which features a page of Of…
Stott mentions 3 bindings, and this copy is differentiated by the top gilt edge and the spine with gold letters. It isn't clear whether this is binding (i) or (ii) as the colour, after over a hundred years, is hard to tell.
The skeleton of the story is already present in the story “Cupid and the Vicar of Swale” (1900), then it was written in 1902 as a novel called Loaves and Fishes; when it failed to find a publisher, Maugham rewrote it into a play of the same name in…
