One of the most admired and widely read authors of this century W. Somerset Maugham established his reputation as a master of the English social comedy in the tradition of Oscar Wilde with Lady Frederick in 1907. The three other plays in this selection provide equal proof of his powers as a dramatist. For Services Rendered sheds a harrowing light on provincial middle-class England after the First World War. The Letter, a tense drama of sexual passion set in the Malay States, shows Maugham as the colonial storyteller. In contrast, Home and Beauty treats the marital complications of a returning war hero with great joie de vivre.

Introduction by: Anthony Curtis