For Services Rendered and Other Plays - Tapa blanda

For Services Rendered lays bare the horror, futility and misery of the First World War. Simultaneously applauded by the critics with glowing reviews and berated by others as malevolent propaganda, this controversial work divided the literary world in two. The Letter tells the story of the sensational tragedy which results from a wife's infidelity in Malaya. Home and Beauty tells the comic story of a woman who finds herself the wife of two men, and subject of the affections of a third, in a delightfully misanthropic treatment of marriage. Lady Frederick is a satirical portrait of a middle-aged adventuress, who relieves herself of heavy debts by marrying the besotted Lord Mereston and then decides to disillusion him.

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St Thomas's Hospital with the idea of practicing medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I, and his career in the theatre did not end until 1933 with Sheppey. His fame as a short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections. His other works include travel books such as On a Chinese Screen and Don Fernando, essays, criticism, and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965.