[SIGNED] A Writer's Notebook

Garden City, New York : Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1949. First American Edition, 1st Printing.

Small Quarto (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches; 245 x 165 mm), xvi, 367, [1] pages, in red buckram, top edge gilt, titles to spine in black and gilt, in an acetate dust jacket and black slipcase.

SIGNED by Somerset Maugham on the limitation page in the front of the book, one of 1,000 signed and numbered copies (ours is number 342). A collection of short excerpts from the notebooks that Maugham kept during much of his life, with entries ranging from 1892 to 1944 and covering numerous countries.

Maugham had a keen power of observation, writing vividly about the people he met and the places he visited. For instance, here's an entry from 1917, when he visited Russia during the revolution and met Alexander Kerensky: "He came into the room followed by his A.D.C. [aide de camp], with a quick step, and gave me a firm, hasty, mechanical handshake. He seemed fearfully on edge. Sitting down and talking incessantly, he took hold of a cigarette box and played with it restlessly, locking and unlocking it, opening and shutting it, turning it round and round. His speech was rapid and emphatic; and his nervousness made me nervous too....His conversation did not suggest a man of wide culture, hardly even a man of general education. His personality had no magnetism." (pages 186-187).

CONDITION: The book is Fine, the acetate dust jacket has some nicks and tears, and the slipcase is scuffed, edge-worn, and has some flaking along the opening. A beautiful copy of the book, signed by the author.