The writer who uses this device is writing fiction and if he makes the I of his story a little quicker on the uptake, a little more level-headed, a little shrewder, a little braver, a little more ingenious, a little wittier, a little wiser than he, the writer, really is, the reader must show indulgence. He may be the hero or he may be an onlooker or a confidant. But the I who writes is just as much a character in the story as the other persons with whom it is concerned. Thus they lost the great advantage of verisimilitude which writing in the first person singular offers. They would narrate long conversations that they couldn't possibly have heard and incidents which in the nature of things they couldn't possibly have witnessed. Some of the older novelists who wrote in the first person were in this respect very careless. It has besides the merit from the story-teller's point of view that he need only tell you what he knows for a fact and can leave to your imagination what he doesn't or couldn't know.
Its object is of course to achieve credibility, for when someone tells you what he states happened to himself you are more likely to believe that he is telling the truth than when he tells you what happened to somebody else. It was used by Petronius Arbiter in the Satyricon and by many of the story-tellers in The Thousand and One Nights. That is a literary convention which is as old as the hills. The reader will notice that many of my stories are written in the first person singular. There is one point I want to make about these stories. Great Britain in 1951 by William HeinemannĪs the Collected Short Stories in 1975 by Pan Books LtdĪddresses for companies within The Random House Group LimitedĬan be found at: The Random House Group Limited Reg. The Complete Short Stories first published in This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965. His other works include travel books such as On a Chinese Screen and Don Fernando, essays, criticism, and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. His fame as a short story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections.
His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I, and his career in the theatre did not end until 1933 with Sheppey. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. 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. Thomas's Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. Also Available In Vintage OF HUMAN BONDAGE