Lady Frederick

This post is about the very important Maugham play, "Lady Frederick" without which this blog wouldn't exist. In 1907 after the novel "The Bishop's Apron" (1906, Chapman and Hall) failed to be a hit, and after Maugham was at the last of his money, he was going to quit writing. He was getting ready to take some brush-up medical classes and become a doctor, which is what he was trained and certified to be. Well, Fate had other ideas. A stage producer had to cancel the play he was to bring out that 1907 season and was rummaging through a myriad of manuscripts sent to him by literary agents. Among those was, of course, "Lady Frederick". He put the play on. He figured it would just be temporary until the former play got worked out. It became a huge hit. And this is how Maugham became famous. He then had 4 hit plays running in London at the same time. His old publisher William Heinemann published the novels "The Explorer" (January 1908) and "The Magician" (October 1908). The rest, as they say, is history. If it weren't for "Lady Frederick" none of us living would have ever heard of  W. Somerset Maugham. This is why I chose to purchase a true first edition of this play. While it was performed first in 1907, it wasn't published in book form until 1912. Only 500 were printed! This one was on eBay for a very long time, surprisingly. It was for a decent price, at $120. Luckily, for me, it was still available at that price. I just received it recently.

Tellers of Tales

I just purchased the 1st edition with dust-jacket of  the "Tellers of Tales" anthology put together with commentary, if I remember correctly, by Maugham. I paid $8.99. I had a copy of this book a long, long time ago which I bought at a Public Library book sale for $1.00 with no dust-jacket. Well, imagine my shock at the prices I saw on eBay and ABE! The cheapest one on eBay is without a dust-jacket and in horrible condition for $7.00. There are currently four listings on eBay with the dust-jacket for $65, $143, $195 (!!!), and $199 (!!!!) respectively. The cheapest one on ABE is $30. I found mine on good ol' Amazon. There is another cheap 1st, 1st with dust-jacket for sale at Powell's Books for $10.50 though they describe the dust-jacket as 'in poor shape'.

Another Great Deal

I found this on eBay. When it comes to Maugham's later books a 1st,1st has less value because of the large print runs. The more copies are out there, the less the value. This particular book-seller is constantly selling 1st, 1st Maugham books without knowing it. I've obtained really cheap ones from them. They don't advertise these books as firsts. You won't find any of the extremely rare ones there at World of Books (known also by World of Rare Books). They are based in the U.K, but apparently have a warehouse in Florida, U.S.A. as well. They are super-quick with their shipments.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Vagrant-Mood-Six-Essays-Maugham-W-Somerset-1952-ID-61384-/381408733703?hash=item58cdbb6a07

"On a Chinese Screen" (1922)

This is one of my prized possessions. It's the true 1st edition of "On a Chinese Screen" (1922). It was put out by Doran before the British one. It is extremely rare to find one in the original dust-jacket. As you can see the "GDH" stamp is directly underneath the copyright notice which is where it needs to be to indicate that it's a 1st printing. Doran also put a larger GDH stamp on the title pages of all his books, don't confuse that larger stamp with the one indicating a 1st printing.

The 1st printing had a run of 2000 copies. I won this at an eBay auction for $175. The trick to auctions on eBay is to get in at the last second. Sometimes you really have to fight with others doing the same. Often it comes down to luck - whose bid gets recorded in at the final half-second. It's not a pleasant experience.

Great Deal for 1st, 1st "The Moon and Sixpence" (1919)!

In between the rip-offs, and the reasonable 1st, 1st listings for sale, you'll occasionally find a really amazing deal. Here's one I found for "The Moon and Sixpence" (1919) true 1st, 1st. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=11814150841&searchurl=fe%3Don%26pics%3Don%26sortby%3D0%26kn%3Dmaugham

It has the true mark of the 1st,1st which is the four pages of publisher's ads in the back.

I paid $400 for mine a couple of years ago!

Lately I've been finding some pretty good deals, as well as other Maugham items of interest, by going to the ABE books site, typing 'Maugham' in the search field, then narrowing it down by clicking on the small boxes for '1st edition,' 'seller-supplied images' and 'not printed-on-demand' on the left of the page then arranging the list at the top right of the page to 'most recently listed.' There is a true 1st, 1st of "First Person Singular" (1931) for just $8.00! somewhere in there.

An Example of What Not To Buy

This seller on eBay [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-SUMMING-UP-BY-W-SOMERSET-MAUGHAM-FIRST-EDITION-1938-/251119251045?hash=item3a77dfae65 ] has 3 watchers fooled. This edition of "The Summing Up" is not a 1st edition, nor is it a 2nd printing. It is worth about $10-$15 maximum. I'll give this seller the benefit of the doubt and say that because he actually shows a photo of the copyright notice without the First Edition stated he doesn't know any better. But he's charging $350! The true 1st edition is the Heinemann 1st with a  rather plain, boring blue dust-jacket. I'll have a post about it sometime in the future.

Of Human Bondage

Other phrases you'll see when collecting Maugham is 1st American, 1st British, and true 1st. I mentioned that Maugham chiefly had two publishers - one (Doran then Doubleday Doran) in America, and one (William Heinemann) in England. The true 1st is whichever publisher released the book first. So, unless the seller is in error, when they list a Maugham book as a 1st American, or 1st British it's usually because the book came out first in the other country. When I first started collecting I assumed, since Maugham was British, the British 1st was always the true 1st. This is not the case with Maugham's most famous novel, "Of Human Bondage" (1915). The American 1st was released one day before the British 1st, making the Doran edition the true 1st. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was before Doran made his 1st edition, 1st printings distinguishable with his "GDH" stamp directly under the copyright notice. So, in the second photo in this post, you'll see a typo (which I highlighted in Photoshop - not on the actual book!). This typo on page 257 is what you need to see before you know you're buying a true 1st, 1st of this great novel. I have had a corrected 2nd printing (also from 1915) with the gold lettering on the spine, and gold knock-out lettering on the cover with that particular typo corrected. The 2nd printing still has other typos though, but they show up in both printings. It's not until the 2nd printing by Doran in 1919 with the spine lettering in black with black knock-out lettering on the front cover that mostly all these typos are corrected. [Thanks to "Anonymous" from the My Maugham Collection site for helping me with that research.]

The cheapest copy I see available is on eBay for $1200. [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/Of-Human-Bondage-W-SOMERSET-MAUGHAM-First-Edition-1st-Issue-1915-/321818340163?hash=item4aedde2b43 ] That copy is in better shape than mine which I got for around $700. There is one in the best possible shape for $2500 on eBay as well. If you're a serious collector, don't buy an "early" edition or the British Heinemann 1st - you'll be wasting your money. Don't be fooled that just because a seller is charging a lot of money for a book that it is valuable. If you're NOT a serious collector, you'd be better off buying one of the fine reprints put out by Grossett and Dunlap if you can find one at a decent price which you can do if you look hard enough (theirs is the one with the engraving of the man in chains on the front cover), or better yet if you can find a Sun Dial Press printing WITH the yellow dust-jacket, that one is really nice. You can find the Sun Dial one without the dust jacket for about $2.00, and with the dust-jacket maybe for around $10-$15.