Report on Maugham

47 (his critic), from Rimbaud, Hopkins, Wildred Owen, Auden, W. C. Williams, Jeffers, Tate on Hart Crane and from Crane's work, and from Lawrence on Poe and on Whitman. I sus pect one can make a great deal more of this collection than Mr. Shapiro seems to have in mind. The Chronological Guide to Modern Poetry gives a skimpy and really quite meaningless selection of titles (criticism, prose, poetry) and something Shapiro calls events. One may wonder what Shapiro has in mind when he lists the Surrealist Manifesto, Poe translated by Baudelaire, Dadaism, First CANTO published in POETRY, UDY CHATTERLEY arrested, Pound released, IADY CHATTERLEY released, and Death of Tennyson all as events and gives no category designation for "Decadents" (why the quotation marks?), Death of Wagner, Symbolist Manifesto, etc. He records when Austin was made Laureate but not when Dickens died. The publication of Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" and "Ballad of Reading Gaol" is recorded but not Wilde's trial or his death. And so on. The essays are useful, well worth having in the same volume. The editor's filler might have been spared and the print siightly enlarged. Purdue University H. E. Gerber 5. Report on Maugham Laurence Brander. SOMERSET MAUGHAM: AGUIDE. Edinburgh & Lond: Oliver & Boyd; NY: Barnes & Noble, 1963. $5.00. I use the phrase "a report on Maugham" to imply that this book is not "a reading of Maugham," or a "reassessment," or, for that matter, a critical study. The subtitle, "A Guide," is appropriate. This slim book of 213 pages of text covers all the novels from LI2A OF LAMBETH through CATALINA, all the collections of short stories (most of the individual titles seem at least to be mentioned somewhere in the text), the plays (about 7 pages on the prefaces, and about 21 pages on the plays), the travel books, the "personal writings," and the critical books. In view of Maugham's enormous output, one cannot expect much critical analysis, evaluation, or new scholarship in a book such as this. It is frankly a guide to or a survey of "the whole of Maugham's work," and within this limitation it ¡S a good book. It blends in a readable way biographical data, plot summaries, comments on the essential characteristics of individual works, Maugham's own comments on the various genres he practiced and on his views on the world in which he was an observant traveller, some indication of the critical reception accorded most of his major work, occasional indication of some of the sources of Maugham's inspiration, and so on. In fact, it is quite surprising how much Mr. Brander can at least note, although not discuss, in so brief a volume on so vast a subject. Mr. Brander's select bibliography of Maugham's works, with a breakdown of the stories in the various collections, is very good. One could wish, however, that a guide to Maugham might offer a fuller listing of critical and biographical studies than the four works listed in this category. Purdue University H. E. Gerber ...