Fiction & Literature Classics, World Literature, Fiction Subjects

Cakes and Ale

Name: Cakes and Ale
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
ISBN: 9780375725029

by W. Somerset Maugham

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Overview

Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrassing shadow over his career and respectable image. Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best.

Synopsis

Cakes and Ale roused a storm of controversy when it was first published in 1930. It is both a wickedly satirical novel about contemporary literary poseurs and a skillfully crafted study of freedom. It is also the book for which Maugham wanted most to be remembered.

About the Author, W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He trained as a doctor in London where he started writing his first novels. In 1926 he bought a house in Cap Ferrat, France, which was to become a meeting place for a number of writers, artists and politicians. He died in 1965.