Of Human Bondage.

MAUGHAM, W. Somerset.

Item Number: 97876

New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co, 1936.

Signed limited edition of Maugham’s masterpiece. Large octavo, original cloth with gilt emblem to the front panel, top edge gilt, engraved frontispiece, illustrated with engravings by Randolph Schwabe. One of 751 copies signed by both the author and illustrator, this is number 493. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in the original illustrated slipcase. Uncommon in this condition.

“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.