Ashenden or The British Agent - William Somerset Maugham

1928 - William Heinemann, London - First Edition
A fine copy in superb fresh example of the scarce, delicate, and striking dust jacket, without restoration, conservation, or repair.

Somerset Maugham's highly influential collection of espionage thrillers based on his own experiences in British Intelligence during the First World War.

Considered the ‘the archetype of the espionage novel’, inspiring many later writers in the genre including Ian Fleming, John Le Carré, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and Len Deighton among others.

A Haycraft-Queen cornerstone book. Two of the stories in
Ashenden were used by Alfred Hitchcock as the basis for The Secret Agent. 
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Price HK$ 60,000



On a Chinese Screen - William Somerset Maugham

1922 - William Heinemann, London - First English Edition
First edition of Maugham’s collection of sketches on China.

Maugham spent the winter months of 1919 travelling fifteen hundred miles up the Yangtze river, with what are clearly long stops in Shanghai and Hong Kong amongst other treaty ports. Always more interested in people than places, he noted down acute and finely crafted sketches of those he met on countless scraps of paper.

In the resulting collection we encounter Western missionaries, army officers and company managers who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation. Maugham keenly observes, and gently ridicules, their dogged and oblivious persistence with the life they know. In total 58 sketches.
 
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Price HK$ 15,000



The Casuarina Tree - Six Stories - William Somerset Maugham

1926 - William Heinemann Ltd., London - First Edition
First edition in the scarce dust jacket designed by Ralph Keene

Maugham’s collection of short stories by set in the Federated Malay States during the 1920s, including one of his most aclaimed ‘The Outsider’.

by W. Somerset Maugham. The stories are loosely based on Maugham's experiences traveling in the region for about a year

With a short introduction entitled ‘
The Casuarina Tree’ followed by the stories – ‘Before the Party’, ‘P. & O.’, ‘The Outstation’, ‘The Force of Circumstance’, ‘The Yellow Streak’, and ‘The Letter’. 
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Price HK$ 40,000



The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong - William Somerset Maugham

1930 - William Heinemann Ltd., London - First Edition
First edition of ‘Maugham's finest travel book’.

‘As the urbane novelist wends his way through tropic climes, he reads Proust under the mosquito netting, listens to stories of passion and madness from British colonials gone to seed, and bears up under the merciless sun, sipping at a gin and bitters and laying out a hand of solitaire’ -
Washington Post

An account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life. [
Random House] 
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Price HK$ 5,000



Christmas Holiday - William Somerset Maugham

1939 - William Heinemann Ltd, London - First Edition
An exceptional example of the first edition, one of Maugham’s darker tales, Paris, the Russian Revolution, a lost generation and self-destruction.

The basis for the 1944 film noir, a highlight for director Robert Siodmak, starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly.
 
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Price HK$ 7,000



A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh

1934 - Chapman and Hall Ltd., London - First Edition
All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent.

‘Few writers have walked the line between farce and tragedy as nimbly as Evelyn Waugh, who employed the conventions of the comic novel to chip away at the already crumbling English class system. His 1934 novel,
A Handful of Dust, is a sublime example of his bleak satirical style: a mordantly funny exposé of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.’ – Simon Leake.

First edition of what many consider one of Waugh’s best works.
 
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Price HK$ 4,000



Mr Loveday's Little Outing And Other Sad Stories - Evelyn Waugh

1936 - Chapman and Hall, London - First Edition
First edition, with the evocative frontispiece illustration by Thomas Derrick (1885-1954).

‘In this unique collection of Waugh's early short stories, some of which became the inspirations for his novels, Waugh displays his unique talent for comedy and narration. 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident, while 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.’ [
Penguin] 
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Price HK$ 1,500