From one of the twentieth century's greatest literary minds comes a novel of the working class. Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, offers insight into the everyday lives of working class Londoners at the turn of the twentieth century. Liza Kemp is an eighteen-year-old girl working in a factory in the Lambeth slum along London's Vere Street. As Liza enters into a misguided affair with an older, married man, Jim Blakeston, the novel reveals the tragedies and abuses suffered by those living in poverty. A mood of subdued acceptance of one's life conditions prevails in this novel, which sparked the literary career of one of England's most successful authors of the twentieth century.
|...| Liza of Lambeth (1897) was W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, which he wrote while working as a doctor at a hospital in Lambeth, then a working class district of London. It depicts the short life and death of Liza Kemp, an 18-year-old factory worker who lives together with her aging mother in Vere Street (obviously fictional) off Westminster Bridge Road (real) in Lambeth. It gives the reader an interesting insight into the everyday lives of working class Londoners at the turn of the century.
[About the Author]: WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874-1965) was born in Paris, the son of a British embassy official, and grew up in England. He studied medicine and officially qualified as a doctor before turning to writing. One of the twentieth century's most popular novelists as well as a celebrated playwright, critic, and short-story writer, he also served as a secret agent for the British during World War I.
Aventura / Drama / Literatura Estrangeira / Romance / Suspense e Mistério / Ficção