George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion has varied about his works, but he has regularly been rated as second only to Shakespeare among British dramatists; analysts recognise his extensive influe... Read More
There's a reason why Pygmalion's been turned into a movie, a musical, and a movie musical. Shaw wrote the play in early 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs Patrick Campbell in June. She came on board almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown contributed to the delay of a London production. Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913, in a German translatio... Read More
When you hear the phrase "spy fiction," two words slide into your mind: James Bond. Yet some of our very finest literary writers, such as Joseph Conrad, Norman Mailer and W. Somerset Maugham, also have been drawn to the moral ambiguity of the cloak-and-dagger world. Ashenden, or the British Agent is a 1928 collection of loosely linked stories. The British Agent is founded on Maugham's experienc... Read More
British novelist, playwright, short-story writer, Somerset Maugham was the highest paid author in the world in the 1930s. Despite his popularity, Maugham did not gain serious recognition from his contemporaries. In many of his novels, the setting is international and the stories are told in a clear, economical style. His thirst to see the world was evidenced by the fact that, disguising himself... Read More
William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include The Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On a Chinese Screen, a... Read More
William Somerset Maugham, British playwright and novelist, was one of the most reputed and well-known writers of his era, and one of the highest-paid authors of his time. His work was popular for his simple style of writing, as well as his sharp and accurate understanding and judgment of human nature. An Official Position is a short story about crime and justice. Louis Remire, convicted of kill... Read More
W. Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. A year after his first novel Liza of Lambeth was published Maugham began contributing to magazines and periodicals; initially, these were short stories, but he also wrote opinion pieces, non-fictional and autobiographical work, and letters. Much of his non-fictional writing was published in book form. The Narrow Corn... Read More
Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard is a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham drew his title from the remark of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Late in life, Somerset Maugham claimed that this was the favourite among his novels and it is easy to... Read More
William Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. Born in the British Embassy in Paris, where his father worked, Maugham was an orphan by the age of ten. He was raised by an uncle, who tried to persuade the youngster to become an accountant or parson; Maugham instead trained as a doctor, although he never practised professionally, as his first novel, Liza of La... Read More
Nobody would dispute that William Somerset Maugham was a professional writer. He himself saw that as the only way to write, in order to be able to produce a body of meaningful work that would contribute to the field of literature. Besides the exigencies he puts on the writer, he also outlines the essential qualities of the critic, which are indeed demanding. W. Somerset Maugham was among the mo... Read More
The highest paid author during the 1930s William Somerset Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle after both of his parents died before he was ten. For five years he studied medicine at the medical school of St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth. The initial run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he ser... Read More
A British playwright, novelist and short story writer William Somerset Maugham, better known as W. Somerset Maugham, was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a ver... Read More
Wuthering Heights is now a classic of English literature, but back in the Victorian era it was controversial because of its unusually stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals regarding religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby... Read More
The three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne each published works during the Victorian era. Villette uses the biographical structure commonly seen in traditional Victorian literature but deviates somewhat due to its autobiographical nature. Many of the events that happen to the protagonist of the story mirror the events in the author's life. Like Lucy, Charlotte Brontë experienced family... Read More
Most famous for her passionate novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë also published poems and three other novels. She was the third of six children of Patrick Brontë, an Irish crofter’s son who rose via a Cambridge education to become, in 1820, a perpetual curate at Haworth, in Yorkshire. Jane Eyre first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell listed as the editor. It is... Read More
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on 21 July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, was a prominent physician and surgeon and a member of the staff of Oak Park Hospital. In Oak Park, Hemingway led the conventional, restrictive life that most boys of upper-middle-class families in late Victorian America endured; he attended public school, acted in school plays, playe... Read More
Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was originally published in 1940 and follows a young American guerrilla fighter. Throughout 1937 and 1938, Hemingway travelled between Spain and America promoting the Loyalist cause. He helped in the production of a short film about the effects of the war in Spain on its people, The Spanish Earth, and made many publicity and fund-raising appear... Read More
The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. The Old Man and the Sea became a Book of the Month Club selection and made Hemingway a celebrity. Published in book form on September 1, 1952, the first edition print run was 50... Read More
In striving to be as objective and honest as possible, Ernest Hemingway hit upon the device of describing a series of actions by using short, simple sentences from which all comment or emotional rhetoric has been eliminated. The resulting terse, concentrated prose is concrete and unemotional yet is often resonant and capable of conveying great irony through understatement. Hemingway's next-door... Read More
Hemingway’s prose style was probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. He wished to strip his own use of language of inessentials, ridding it of all traces of verbosity, embellishment, and sentimentality. The short story "Cat in the Rain" was written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy... Read More