What a harrowing thing it is when upon arriving home from a foreign country (particularly one that has only just recently raised up from Third World country status) you realize you left something behind that you cherish. Last November (2014) I went to Seoul, South Korea. I brought some shirts I really loved, some other things, and oh yeah my true 1st edition, 1st printing of "The Merry-Go-Round" (1904). I'll admit my mind was in a muddle upon leaving - I really just wanted to get home - and in my haste I left a couple of shirts (my two favorite ones) and The Merry-Go-Round at the hotel. My wife also left her purse there with a few hundred dollars in it. We arrived home. After making phone calls, or rather asking my wife's extremely busy uncle to call the hotel we realized it was useless: the purse, the book, and the shirts were gone; so much for Korean Christian honesty. I handled it well, because once I know something is useless to go after I become resigned to the facts. I let a couple of months go by. I finally remembered the name of the hotel (we were put up in it by my wife's uncle so I never even bothered or even needed to know the name). I sent them a message through my wife's e-mail account from which was the only way to get an immediate response (it's a Korean thing). They wrote back saying they found nothing, and that even if they did they would have only held it for 30 days. I distressed over the fact that my book was either stolen or, even worse, in a landfill somewhere in Korea. So I took to the internet to find another copy. At the time I bought it a year prior to losing it, there were 3 copies available on various websites. Well I know that at least from March of '15 until just under a week ago there were absolutely NO copies available. In March I settled for a 1960's Heinemann collected edition reprint, ruefully thinking for most of the year that it was the closest thing I'd find, and that 1st edition, 1st printings of "The Merry-Go-Round" just vanished from the market forever.
Then I found this one just a few days ago. I of course immediately bargained the price down a bit and got them to include priority mail for free. And now here it is! Finally! My Maugham collection is complete!* Note the press reviews for Maugham's previous novel "Mrs. Craddock" (1902).
