Of Human Bondage: A Novel

MAUGHAM, W. Somerset.

$6,000.00

Item Number: 147535

London: William Heinemann, 1915.

First edition, first printing of Maugham’s masterpiece and one of the most important novels of the 20th century. First printing with the list of other “Works” by Maugham facing half-title, plus publisher’s ad page for works by other authors on half-title verso, with the misprint on page 257, line 4 (“help”). Octavo, original publisher’s cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For James Spencer This by way of being an autobiographical novel, but it is a novel & fiction has as great a place in it as fact. W. Somerset Maugham.” In very good condition with the first two preliminary hinges reinforced. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A unique example of the work Maugham considered his best.

“Maugham’s longest and most ambitious novel, in which ‘fact and fiction are inextricably mixed,’ draws heavily upon the author’s own youth, with circumstances and names scarcely altered” (Parker, 63). “As early as 1911 [Maugham] had retired temporarily from the theatre to work on his long novel, Of Human Bondage. He was to correct the proofs under the admiring eyes of Desmond MacCarthy in a small hotel at Malo, near Dunkirk; the two men were drivers in an ambulance unit for which they had volunteered at the outbreak of war in 1914… Of Human Bondage was published in 1915. It was less noticed in wartime London than in New York, where Theodore Dreiser reviewed it with enthusiasm. It remains Maugham’s most impressive literary work, and by the time of his death [1965] was said to have sold ten million copies” (DNB). It was the basis for the 1934 film directed by John Cromwell starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.