OF HUMAN BONDAGE [with T.L.s. from Theodore Dreiser]

1915. [with letter from Theodore Dreise] New York: George H. Doran Company, n.d. [1915]. Original green cloth.

First Edition, published one day earlier than Heinemann's edition in London. This was Maugham's famed autobiographical novel about Philip Carey, who has a club foot and who attends King's School, Tercanbury [Maugham had a stammer and attended King's School, Canterbury]; who rejects the idea of the ministry and who studies in Heidelberg and later becomes a doctor [like Maugham]; who becomes obsessed with a vulgar waitress, Mildred Rogers, who goes to a bad end [cf. Liza of Lambeth], etc. But the novel succeeds because of its unflinching honesty and its devastating account of loneliness, the most tragic of all human conditions. [CGEL] This copy is in the later state, with the error on the fourth line of p. 257 corrected (also on lighter weight paper). The binding is correspondingly later state, with the stamping in black rather than in gilt (due to the onset of the war). Condition is fine save for the slightest of wear at the lower corners of the spine. Due to its size (648 pp), this seems to be a tough volume to find in this condition. Toole Stott A22 (also Appendix note 20 and Supplement pp 6-7); a Modern Library 100 Selection. Housed in a morocco-backed clamshell case. Loosely inserted is a typed letter signed, to "Mr. Maugham" from the American author Theodore Dreiser, dated Jan. 13, 1921 (and with a return address of P. O. Box 181, Los Angeles). Dreiser types Your invitation reaches me too late for acceptance this week. Any evening after Tuesday next, if convenient to you will be agreeable to me. Thank you for for [sic] your interest and your tender. I hope that your stay here will prove pleasing to you. [signed,] Theodore Dreiser [and, in Dreiser's hand as a P.S.:] Give me 24 hours lee way A bit of background... The appearance of Maugham's Bildungsroman in 1915 was poorly timed. There was enough misery in British homes without his contribution, and it was hardly light reading for men in the trenches. The critics seemed to think that Maugham had let down his public in their hour of need... The novel did not fare much better in America... Of Human Bondage was rescued by one influential critic, who was also the leading American realistic novelist -- Theodore Dreiser. Writing in the December 25, 1915 issue of the New Republic under the title "As a Realist Sees It," Dreiser called the book a work of genius [comparing it to a Beethoven symphony]. He laid it down, he said, feeling that it was "the perfect thing which we love and cannot understand, but which we are compelled to confess a work of art." Maugham, he went on, was "a great artist"... The Dreiser review was a nice Christmas present for Maugham and gave Of Human Bondage the lift it needed. It has not been out of print since its publication and is still widely read. [Morgan] Five years later, at the time of this letter, Maugham and his companion Gerald Haxton had sailed from England in October 1920, en route to the Federated Malay States by way of New York and California. They arrived in Los Angeles in December, largely to meet with several screenwriters and producers (one of whom was young Samuel Goldwyn) in an effort to sell some scripts. Maugham also met Charlie Chaplin. Although we have not found documentation of any meeting between Maugham and Dreiser, it is apparent from this letter that Maugham used this opportunity to issue an invitation to meet with the man who five years earlier had "rescued" Of Human Bondage. It is quite likely, given the formality of this letter, that the two men had never met before this; and given the vastly different social circles the two men inhabited, it is likely that they never met on this occasion nor thereafter (-- in fact, it is likely that in this letter Dreiser is avoiding having to meet with Maugham and his gay partner). In any event, this is surely one of very few letters that ever passed between these two giants of literature; Dreiser's 1915 review has often been used as an Introduction, in subsequent editions. The letter is slightly browned, but is otherwise fine.