'The Book Bag' & 'The Back of Beyond' First story in the collection, ‘The Book-Bag’, is being narrated by the writer. Its beginning is exceptionally fascinating. Maugham starts with some off-the-cuff remarks about his reading habits. ‘Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I’. He goes onto explain what a book-bag is. Once incarcerated in Java for three months because of an illness, he exhausted all the books he had with him. He was then ‘obliged to buy the schoolbooks from which intelligent Javanese…acquired knowledge of French and German’. Since then, he ‘made a point of travelling with the largest sack made for carrying soiled linen and filling it to the brim with books.’ Except for this bag, he informs us, ‘he should perhaps never have heard the singular history of Olive Hardy’. M...

The Story Behind the Stories Somerset Maugham was one of the most travelled authors of his generation. He was born in France and lived there in luxury – his father was solicitor at the British embassy in Paris – till he lost both his parents at the age of twelve. He came to live with a prudish, self-seeking Uncle, his father’s brother, vicar of Whitstable, and his German wife, who, though not unkind, didn’t know how to be affectionate to a sensitive child. Till then French was his language. He had to adopt a new country as home, new people as guardians – an unwilling elderly couple, stern, and inept with children, of whom they have had none, and learn a new language to communicate. He felt an alien in a foreign land. He stammered. This disability further withheld him from social communion.  A poignant anecdote about his childhood illustrates his fear of ridicule and rebuke from strangers when he was young – ‘Tell him I stammer, Uncle,’ young Willie, as he was known, said to ...