The Somerset Maugham Collection for Palm OS

About The Somerset Maugham Collection

Untitled DocumentHe wrote about impoverished Cockneys living in London's slums, and about the lush lives of England's colonials living in Southeast Asia, and now, you can read four of Somerset Maugham's greatest works in The Somerset Maugham Collection. It includes "Liza of Lambeth," a tragic tale of working-class adultery, "The Magician", based on the life of occultist Aleister Crowley, Maugham's semi-autobiographical "Of Human Bondage," about a tortured, club-footed doctor, and "The Moon and Sixpence," a fictionalized account of the life of artist Paul Gauguin.W(illiam) Somerset Maugham, was born in 1874 in Paris where his father handled legal affairs for the British embassy. Following his mother's death when he was eight, and his father's death two years later, Maugham returned to England to be brought up by an uncle, the Vicar of Whitstable. He attended boarding school at King's School, Canterbury, and was so miserable at both school and in his uncle's care, that he developed a stutter which would remain with him for the rest of his life. "There are three basic rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately nobody knows what they are".
Somerset MaughamAfter briefly studying literature at Heidelberg University, Maugham completed his training as a doctor in London, and it was during this time that he observed humankind in all its varied forms. During WWI, Maugham drove ambulances along with Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and E. E. Cummings, then was recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service to spy for them in Switzerland and Russia. Ian Fleming used Maugham's super cool spy persona as the basis for his character James Bond.A homosexual for most of his life, Maugham never the less had an affair with and eventually married Syrie Wellcome, the wife of pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (think Burroughs Wellcome), which produced a daughter. After spending WWII in the U.S., Maugham lived out the remainder of his life at his villa on the French Riviera, dying in 1965. To read The Somerset Maugham Collection on your Palm, you must first have eReader installed. If you don't already have it, visit their web site to download a free copy. Because The Somerset Maugham Collection is downloaded in a zipped format, you must first unzip it using either Winzip or Stuffit Expander, then use your desktop software to install those books you want to read to your handheld, and start eReader. It's that easy.