The Gentleman In The Parlour
  • Published: 5 October 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099286776
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99
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The Gentleman In The Parlour

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EBook
1 Dec 2010
Paperback
5 Oct 2001
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A fantastic portrait of 1920s Burma and Thailand by the neglected 20th century master

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX

Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own. The Gentleman in the Parlour is an account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.
  • Published: 5 October 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099286776
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

W Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas’ Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer’s Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965

Also by W Somerset Maugham

Plays Volume One
Plays Volume Two
Collected Stories (Maugham)
Collected Short Stories Volume 3
Collected Short Stories Volume 4
Collected Short Stories Volume 2
Collected Short Stories Volume 1
See all

Praise for The Gentleman In The Parlour

There enough raw material to sate his imagination and the journey itself takes on the contours of a story worth recording. Among the coolly-observed descriptions of ruined pagodas there's the added treat of Maugham's catty thoughts on his craft

Sunday Herald (Glasgow)

Maugham's finest travel book...As the urbane novelist wends his way through tropic climes, he reads Proust under the mosquito netting, listens to stories of passion and madness from British colonials gone to seed, and bears up under the merciless sun, sipping at a gin and bitters and laying out a hand of solitaire

Washington Post

An elegant writer's notebook, imaginative, crammed with impressions and ideas received simply and directly, without the filtering screens of literariness or Englishness... he writes with majestic plainness

The Times

A delightful book - It contains vivid travel impressions, some autobiographical confidences, and the plots for a dozen novels

Spectator