THE MERRY-GO-ROUND.
[inscribed to artist Gerald Kelly] London: William Heinemann, 1904. Original dark blue-green cloth with mauresque design in gilt. First Edition of what is today, in our opinion, the scarcest of Maugham's trade editions. It was an experiment by Maugham, telling three independent stories within one novel, loosely-connected by the character Miss Ley, a hardheaded spinster who had appeared in MRS. CRADDOCK two years earlier.
3,000 copies were printed, but sales were so miserable that some copies were bound in a secondary rust-brown binding for a wholesale jobber, and some other copies were turned over to the Times Book Club who issued them with a 1904 or 1905 title page. There was no American edition (other than a few copyright copies). This book caused the break-up between Maugham and his first literary agent W.M. Colles: Colles had convinced Heinemann to publish the book (grudgingly, with as little advertising expense as possible); Maugham would turn to agent J.B. Pinker for his next book (THE BISHOP'S APRON). Maugham later wrote to Colles, "With regard to THE MERRY-GO-ROUND ... I cannot help thinking that ... when a publisher does not like a book and has made up his mind that it will not sell, one might just as well throw it in the Thames as let him publish it" [Toole Stott].
This copy is in very good condition (minor rubbing and wear at the extremities, some cracking of the endpapers but the volume is tight). Toole Stott A7a. Small bookplate of Maugham collector Craig V. Showalter on the rear paste-down. Housed in a simple drop-spine case with leather labels.
This copy is inscribed by Maugham on the front free endpaper, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan? | Gerald | from | W.M." The French quote (roughly "Where are the snows of yesteryear?") is from 16th-Century poet François Villon. "Gerald" was (later Sir) Gerald Kelly (1876-1972) -- a British painter with whom Maugham shared a life-long friendship; the two met in Paris in 1904, the date this book was published. Maugham would base some of his fictional characters on Kelly, such as Frederick Lawson in OF HUMAN BONDAGE and Lionel Hillier in CAKES AND ALE, and he would dedicate ASHENDEN to Kelly. Kelly painted portraits of Maugham eighteen? thirty? times -- most famously in 1911's "The Jester," now housed at the Tate Gallery; Maugham returned the favor by writing exhibition catalogues for Kelly. It was Kelly who first introduced Maugham to Southeast Asia. (Kelly introduced his sister Rose to the self-described "ceremonial magician" Aleister Crowley (whom newspapers described as "the wickedest man in the world"), and -- enabling her to escape an arranged marriage -- the two married in 1903; she was his "magician's assistant," and although they divorced in 1909, Crowley had her committed to a mental institution two years later. Crowley would be the basis for Oliver Haddo, the occult/satanic protagonist of Maugham's THE MAGICIAN in 1908.). Item #15933
Price: $1,850.00