Best Short Stories

Best Short Stories is a compilation, though not exhaustive, of shorter narrative structures that capture Maugham’s fidelity to his outlook – lifting the Victorian cloak of respectability, institutionalized religion, empire and domestic propriety. ‘The Letter’ and ‘P&O’ fictionalize real tensions bubbling under the surface in the Malayaand its Chinese Quarter in the Far East. ‘Rain’ and ‘The Vessel of Wrath’ explore missionary zeal, tussle between redemption and sin and the collapse of moral absolutism, while ‘The Book-Bag’ announces his departure from rigid conventions. Stories such as ‘The Round Dozen’and ‘The Treasure’ contain raw depictions of poverty, bigamy and domestic tragedy, revealing the hypocrisies of the establishment. While ‘The Facts of Life’ suggest growth through an ironic subversion of institutional values, ‘Lord Mountdrago’ becomes a psychological study of conscience, power and unchecked ambition beneath a polished political exterior. Instrumentalizing satire in most of these stories, Maugham uncovers the quiet contradictions, anxieties and disillusionments of nineteenth-century England in the simplest terms.