Of Human Bondage With a Digression on the Art of Fiction: And Address by Somerset Maugham.

MAUGHAM, W. Somerset.

$800.00

Item Number: 108345

Washington: The Library of Congress, 1946.

Signed limited edition of the address given by Maugham upon the Library’s acceptance of the original autograph manuscript of his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage. Octavo, original boards. One of 500 copies signed by W. Somerset Maugham on the front free endpaper. In fine condition. Accompanied by the original accompanying program which is in very good condition. The program contains a brief description of the original autograph manuscript which notes that it is contained in 16 notebooks written on the recto of each leaf, begun in 1911 and finished in 1914.

“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.