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Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Get Book Here
Book Description
During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781609441586
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
These sixteen stories chronicle the adventures of Ashenden as he moves across WWI-riddled Europe, featuring murder, intrigue, deceptions, & the soul-crushing, often-anonymous reality of modern spycraft.
Author: William Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Amereon Limited
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Fact is a poor story-teller as Maugham reminds us. Fact starts a story at random, rambles on inconsequently and tails off , leaving loose ends, without a conclusion. It works up to an interesting situation, has no sense of climax and whittles away its dramatic effects in irrelevance. While some novelists believe this is a proper model for fiction, Maugham believes that fiction should not seek to copy life, but instead choose from life what is curious, telling, and dramatic, but keep to it closely enough not to shock the reader into disbelief. In short, fiction should excite, interest, and absorb the reader. Ashenden: The British Agent is founded on Maugham's experiences in the English Intelligence Department during World War I, but rearranged for the purposes of fiction. This fascinating book contains the most expert stories of espionage ever written. For a period of time after it was first published the book became official required reading for persons entering the secret service. The plot follows the imaginary John Ashenden who during World War I is a spy for British Intelligence. He is sent first to Geneva and later to Russia. Instead of one story from start to finish, the chapters contain individual stories involving many different characters. All of the people whom Ashenden meet during his travels have their own reason for being involved in the spy game, and each are more complex than they first look
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Transaction Pub Large Print
ISBN: 9781412811729
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Fact is a poor story-teller as Maugham reminds us. Fact starts a story at random, rambles on inconsequently and tails off, leaving loose ends, without a conclusion. It works up to an interesting situation, has no sense of climax and whittles away its dramatic effects in irrelevance. While some novelists believe this is a proper model for fiction, Maugham believes that fiction should not seek to copy life, but instead choose from life what is curious, telling, and dramatic, but keep to it closely enough not to shock the reader into disbelief. In short, fiction should excite, interest, and absorb the reader. Ashenden: The British Agent is founded on Maugham's experiences in the English Intelligence Department during World War I, but rearranged for the purposes of fiction. This fascinating book contains the most expert stories of espionage ever written. For a period of time after it was first published the book became official required reading for persons entering the secret service. The plot follows the imaginary John Ashenden who during World War I is a spy for British Intelligence. He is sent first to Geneva and later to Russia. Instead of one story from start to finish, the chapters contain individual stories involving many different characters. All of the people whom Ashenden meet during his travels have their own reason for being involved in the spy game, and each are more complex than they first look.
Author: John Whitwell
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714647302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
British Agent tells the story of a bygone age of espionage. This unique memoir vividly describes a time when a hard-pressed British spy service, with only a handful of agents in Europe, sought to keep track of a continent descending into war. With Nazi Germany increasing in strength the stakes were high, yet this was still the low technology age of the amateur agent. Even a radio transmitter was a rare item; while stationed in Riga, Whitwell had to build his own. John Whitwell, the pseudonym of senior British intelligence officer Leslie Nicholson, conducted his secret work in a succession of European capitals without diplomatic cover, and at times with the German Gestapo and Soviet NKVD perilously close. His story is not one of derring-do, or spectacular coups, but of underground work when every scrap of intelligence was hard-won, and when dark fantasy and uncomfortable fact were exceedingly difficult to distinguish. It is hoped that this tale of British secret service work in Prague, Riga and London, first published in 1966 and long out of print, will provide insight and pleasure to a new generation of readers curious about the still-secret history of espionage.
Author: William Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Ayer Company Pub
ISBN: 9780405078057
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
This fascinating book contains probably the most expert stories of espionage ever written. For a period of time after it was first published, the book became official required reading for persons entering the British Secret Service. During World War I, Maugham enlisted with an ambulance unit, but was soon shifted to the Intelligence Department. Although these stories were based on the author's own experiences as a British agent during the war, he emphasized that they were written purely as entertainment, at which, indeed, Ashenden succeeds. Maugham's clarity of style, the perfection of his form, the subtlety of his thought, veiled thinly behind a worldly cynicism, has made him an international figure.
Author: William Somerset Maugham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92
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Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Up at the Villa" by W. Somerset Maugham. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Author: Sylvio Konkol
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668034621
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: Espionage and love appear as two closely related matters throughout the history of the British spy novel. Between the two domains there seems to exist a mutual attraction as well as an incompatibility. The duties of the spy may put an end to his love affairs, or a love affair may cause the failure of an important espionage mission. The secret agent may give in to emotional feelings, regardless of the dangers this entails, or he may prey upon love as the weak point of another, an enemy spy perhaps. And in some cases, like that of The Quiet American, the secret war affecting the fate of a country becomes coincident with the fight for the love of a woman. This paper aims at comparing two British spy novels, Graham Greene's The Quiet American (1955) and a proportion of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden: or The British Agent (1928). By way of taking into consideration the particular historical context at the time of the novels' publication, the comparison focuses on the following points: Firstly, the respective depiction of the spy and his activities, also with regard to legitimacy and morality. Secondly, the respective depiction of the American, and the British view upon him. Finally, the depictions of the exotic Eastern settings – Russia and Vietnam respectively – and of the women personifying them, as well as their romantic relationships towards the male protagonists. In the end, the results of this comparison will serve to illustrate not only certain tendencies in the development of the spy novel genre, but also the sociocultural turn from colonialism to post-colonialism.
Author: William Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image. Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best.
