The Merry-Go-Round (1904)

The Merry-Go-Round (1904)

Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965

William Heinemann

1904-09-19

Maugham mentions the novel in The Summing Up as one of his experiments:

I tried various experiments. One of them at that time had a certain novelty. The experience of life I was forever eagerly seeking suggested to me that the novelist's method of taking two or three people, or even a group, and describing their adventures, spiritual and otherwise, as though no one else existed and nothing else was happening in the world, gave a very partial picture of reality. I was myself living in several sets that had no connection with one another, and it occurred to me that it might give a truer picture of life if one could carry on at the same time the various stories, of equal importance, that were enacted during a certain period in different circles. I took a larger number of persons than I had ever sought to cope with before and devised four or five independent stories. They were attached to one another by a very thin thread, an elderly woman who knew at least one person in each group. The book was called The Merry-Go-Round. It was rather absurd because owing to the influence on me of the æsthetic school of the nineties I made everyone incredibly beautiful, and It was written In a tight and affected manner. But its chief defect was that it lacked the continuous line that directs the reader's interest; the stories were not after all of equal importance and It was tiresome to divert one's attention from one set of people to another. I failed from my ignorance of the very simple device of seeing the diverse events and the characters that took part in them through the eyes of a single person. It is a device which of course the autobiographical novel has used for centuries, but which Henry James has very usefully developed. By the simple process of writing he for I and stepping down from the omniscience of an all-knowing narrator to the imperfect acquaintance of a participator he showed how to give unity and verisimilitude to a story" (174).

Collation:
p. [iii] half-title, p. [iv] advertisements, "BY THE SAME AUTHOR", p. [v] title, p. [vi] copyright, p. [vii] dedication "To HERBERT AND MARGUERITE BUNNING" [Herbert Bunning the composer] & epigraph [from "The Offering" by Laurence Bingyon], 398 pages

19.5 x 12.5 cm, hardback

Man-woman relationships -- Fiction.

Great Britain -- History -- Edward VII, 1901-1910 -- Fiction.

Stott A7a

MMC_N_MGR1904WH

Text

Public domain

en

Part of the novel involving Basil Kent, Jenny Bush, and Hilda Murray is derived from the play A Man of Honour that Maugham wrote a year before.

First edition

London

Print book

Novel

#18272B (Mirage)

No (none that I know of)

Augustana College Library, Rock Island, Illinois

2013

6s. in 1904, 3,000 copies