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English
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Of Human Bondage is Maugham's masterpiece strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham denied this stating that this was a novel not an autobiography. Though much in it was autobiographical, more is pure invention. Of Human Bondage is often included in lists of best English-language novels of the 20th century.
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Description
Lady Kelsey's drawing room in Mayfair. At the back is a window leading on to a balcony. On the right, a door leads to the staircase, and on the left is another door. It is the sumptuous room of a rich woman. Lady Kelsey is seated, dressed in black; she is a woman of fifty, kind, emotional, and agitated. She is drying her eyes. Mrs. Crowley, a pretty, little woman of twenty-eight, very beautifully dressed, vivacious and gesticulative, is watching her...
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That's why I'm running all over the place to find him. You know he's a relation of the Hollingtons. I was at her ladyship's not half an hour ago-the Dowager, you know-my firm has acted for the whole family for the last hundred years. Well, I'd hardly arrived before a message came from the War Office to say that her grandson, the present lord, had been killed in India. So, as soon as I could, I bolted round here. Mr. Halstane is the next heir, and...
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Description
Drawing-room of the Hotel Splendide at Monte Carlo. A large, handsomely furnished room, with doors right and left, and French windows at the back leading to a terrace. Through these is seen the starry southern night. On one side is a piano, on the other a table with papers neatly laid out on it. There is a lighted stove. Lady Mereston, in evening dress, rather magnificently attired, is reading the papers. She is a handsome woman of forty. She puts...
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The lounge and winter garden of the Grand Babylon Hotel. There are palms and flowers in profusion, and numbers of little tables, surrounded each by two or three chairs. Several people are seated, drinking coffee and liqueurs. At the back, a flight of steps leads to the restaurant, separated from the winter garden by a leaded glass partition and swinging doors. In the restaurant a band is playing.
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English
Description
In the wall facing the auditorium, two windows with little iron balconies, giving a view of London roofs. Between the windows, against the wall, is a writing-desk littered with papers and books. On the right is a door, leading into the passage; on the left a fire-place with arm-chairs on either side; on the chimney-piece various smoking utensils. There are numerous bookshelves filled with books; while on the walls are one or two Delft plates, etchings...
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The drawing room at the Manor House, Colonel Wharton's residence. It is a simple room, somewhat heavily furnished in an old-fashioned style; there is nothing in it which is in the least artistic; but the furniture is comfortable, and neither new nor shabby. On the papered walls are the Academy pictures of forty-years ago. There are a great many framed photographs of men in uniform, and here and there a bunch of simple flowers in a vase. The only things...
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Description
Several shops are shown. Their fronts are richly decorated with carved wood painted red and profusely gilt. The counters are elaborately carved. Outside are huge sign-boards. The shops are open to the street and you can see the various wares they sell. One is a coffin shop, where the coolies are at work on a coffin: other coffins, ready for sale, are displayed; some of them are of plain deal, others are rich, with black and gold. The next shop is...
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Description
The morning room in the Consular Agent's house at Cairo. The windows are Arabic in character and so are the architraves of the doors, but otherwise it is an English room, airy and spacious. The furniture is lacquer and Chippendale, there are cool chintzes on the chairs and sofas, cut roses in glass vases, and growing azaleas in pots; but here and there an Eastern antiquity, a helmet and a coat of mail, a piece of woodwork, reminds one of the Mussulman...
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Description
The drawing-room at Kenyon-Fulton. It is a handsome apartment with large windows, reaching to the ground. On the walls are old masters whose darkness conceals their artistic insignificance. The furniture is fine and solid. Nothing is very new or smart. The chintzes have a rather pallid Victorian air. The room with its substantial magnificence represents the character of a family rather than the taste of an individual. It is night and one or two electric...
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Description
All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for their soul's good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her connections should seek salvation according...
12) Orientations
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English
Description
Xiormonez is the most inaccessible place in Spain. Only one train arrives there in the course of the day, and that arrives at two o'clock in the morning; only one train leaves it, and that starts an hour before sunrise. No one has ever been able to discover what happens to the railway officials during the intermediate one-and-twenty hours. A German painter I met there, who had come by the only train, and had been endeavouring for a fortnight to get...
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These are the memoirs of the Beato Giuliano, brother of the Order of St Francis of Assisi, known in his worldly life as Filippo Brandolini; of which family I, Giulo Brandolini, am the last descendant. On the death of Fra Giuliano the manuscript was given to his nephew Leonello, on whom the estates devolved; and has since been handed down from father to son, as the relic of a member of the family whose piety and good works still shed lustre on the...
14) The Hero
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English
Description
James Parsons returns from the Boer War a changed man. In his idyllic and stifling British village awarded the Victoria Cross for an act of bravery, he considers the medal unwarranted. He was praised and respected in the village of Little Primpton before breaking off his engagement to the woman who has been waiting five years for his return.
15) The Explorer
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English
Description
The sea was very calm. There was no ship in sight, and the sea-gulls were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbled under the feet that trod them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the unceasing encroachment of the waves, were rotten with...
16) Mrs. Craddock
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English
Description
On her 21st birthday, when she comes into her deceased father's money, Bertha Ley announces, to the dismay of her former guardian, that she is going to marry 27-year-old Edward Craddock, her steward. Herself a member of the landed gentry, Bertha has been raised to cultivate an immoderate desire for knowledge and to understand, and enjoy, European culture of both past and present ages. In particular, during long stays on the Continent, she has learned...
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Description
The world takes people very willingly at the estimate in which they hold themselves. With a fashionable bias for expression in a foreign tongue it calls modesty mauvaise honte; and the impudent are thought merely to have a proper opinion of their merit. But Ponsonby was really an imposing personage. His movements were measured and noiseless; and he wore the sombre garb of a gentleman's butler with impressive dignity. He was a large man, flabby and...
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Description
The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It is not so often that it is calm and blue. Then, indeed, the blue is arrogant. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown. The billows, magnificently...
19) Liza of Lambeth
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English
Description
Liza of Lambeth depicts the short life and death of Liza Kemp, an 18-year-old factory worker who lives with her aging mother in the fictional Vere Street off Westminster Bridge Road in Lambeth.
20) The Magician
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English
Description
Maugham wrote The Magician in London after he had spent some time living in Paris, where he met Aleister Crowley. In this tale, the magician of the title, Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life. Crowley wrote a critique of this book under the pen name Oliver Haddo, in which he accused Maugham of plagiarism.
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