Collected Stories

Rating:
Summary: I've read all of his stories.
Review: While I don't have own this particular volume, over the past 20 years I've read every Somerset Maugham story I could lay my hands on. I find it amazing that his short stories were considered somewhat lightweight in their time, too popular to be literature. They can be read over and over again with pleasure. They range from ironic to tragic to a few that are really funny. ("Jane" still makes me chuckle after a dozen readings.) One caveat: a working knowledge of how the British lived during Maugham's era, both at home and abroad, is a help. If you know absolutely zip about baronets' wives in 1910 or Malaysian rubber planters in 1933, you may miss a point or two.