Of Human Bondage (1915) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by his experiences as an orphan and young student, Maugham composed his masterpiece. Adapted several times for film, Of Human Bondage is a story of tragedy, perseverance, and the eternal search for happiness which drives us as much as it haunts our every move. Orphaned as a boy, Philip Carey is raised in an affectionless household by his aunt and uncle. Although his Aunt Louisa tries to make him feel welcome, William proves an uncaring, vindictive man. Left to fend for himself most days, Philip finds solace in the family’s substantial collection of books, which serve as an escape for the imaginative boy. Sent to study at a prestigious boarding school, Philip struggles to fit in with his peers, who abuse him for his intelligence and club foot. Despite his struggles, he perseveres in his studies and chooses his own path in life, moving to Heidelberg, Germany and denying his uncle’s wish that he attend Oxford. As he struggles to become a professional artist, Philip learns that one’s dreams are often unsubstantiated in the world of the living. Of Human Bondage is a tale of desire, disappointment, and romance by a master stylist with a keen sense of the complications inherent to human nature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

Excerpt from Of Human Bondage a Novel She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child up. The doctor handed him back to his nurse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham From an orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

This premium quality unabridged large print edition contains the complete text of W. Somerset Maugham's classic novel, Of Human Bondage, printed on heavyweight bright white paper in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full-color design. Widely regarded as the masterpiece of a long and highly successful career, Of Human Bondage is the story of a young man's search for meaning in a world that seems almost intentionally cruel. Subjected to cruelty at school and ridicule as an adult because of his club-foot, Philip Carey grows introspective and solitary, suffering silently and aching to find love while lavishing his attention on hopeless causes and futile gestures, struggling to do what he believes is right, albeit often for misguided reasons. The title derives from the notion that man is often compelled to act - in effect, held in bondage - by human passions he is unable to control. The extent to which the novel is autobiographical has long been debated. Maugham long maintained it was predominantly fiction, but in his later years he admitted that his works contained such an intertwined mixture of fact and fiction that it had become increasingly difficult for him to separate the two. The novel contains numerous autobiographical elements. Maugham, like his protagonist, Philip Carey, was orphaned and raised by an emotionally distant uncle and eventually sent to boarding school where his disability subjected him to ridicule and abuse - Maugham had a pronounced stammer. He traveled and lived in Germany and France, studied medicine, living and working among London's poor, and subsequently abandoned the profession. And Maugham would later say that, like Philip Carey, he had often directed his affection at those who did not return it. W. Somerset Maugham... William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a British author and playwright. Among the most popular writers of his era he is said to have been the highest paid author of the 1930s. Maugham lost both parents by the age of 10 and was raised by an emotionally detached paternal uncle. Rejecting the legal career followed by most of the men in his family, Maugham eventually opted for medical training, studying for five years at St. Thomas Hospital in Lambeth, London, gaining certification as a medic. With the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), he gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War he served with the British Red Cross ambulance corps and, beginning in 1916, with the British Secret Intelligence Service, working in Switzerland and Russia. During and after the war he travelled in India and Southeast Asia. He incorporated his impressions in his many short stories and novels, ultimately coming to be regarded as a major chronicler of the twilight of the colonial era. Successful as both a novelist and a playwright, Maugham became quite wealthy. In his later years he was widely respected and viewed with affection by the public, but those years were clouded by an acrimonious dispute with his daughter over his estate. In the course of this ugly quarrel he publicly claimed that he was not in fact her father, which tarnished his reputation and cost him several friends. In fact, Elizabeth had been conceived and born while Maugham was involved in an affair with her mother, who was still married to her first husband. Maugham subsequently married Syrie Wellcome and was most likely Elizabeth's biological father, but the primary emotional relationship of his life was with Frederick Gerald Haxton, who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944. He spent his declining years at his villa in France, where he died as a result of pneumonia in 1965.

Perhaps everything we think, feel, and do is determined, and humans--like stones or clouds--are slaves to the laws of nature. Would that be a terrible state? Philosophers who take the incompatibilist position think so, arguing that a deterministic world would be one without moral responsibility and perhaps without true love, meaningful art, and real rationality. But compatibilists and semicompatibilists argue that determinism need not worry us. As long as our actions stem, in an appropriate way, from us, or respond in some way to reasons, our actions are meaningful and can be judged on their moral (or other) merit. In this highly original work, Nomy Arpaly argues that a deterministic world does not preclude moral responsibility, rationality, and love--in short, meaningful lives--but that there would still be something lamentable about a deterministic world. A person may respond well to reasons, and her actions may faithfully reflect her true self or values, but she may still feel that she is not free. Arpaly argues that compatibilists and semicompatibilists are wrong to dismiss this feeling--for which there are no philosophical consolations--as philosophically irrelevant. On the way to this bittersweet conclusion, Arpaly sets forth surprising theories about acting for reasons, the widely accepted idea that "ought implies can," moral blame, and more.

This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!

The Way of All Flesh is one of the time-bombs of literature," said V. S. Pritchett. "One thinks of it lying in Samuel Butler's desk for thirty years, waiting to blow up the Victorian family and with it the whole great pillared and balustraded edifice of the Victorian novel." Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, a year after Butler's death, his marvelously uninhibited satire savages Victorian bourgeois values as personified by multiple generations of the Pontifex family. A thinly veiled account of his own upbringing in the bosom of a God-fearing Christian family, Butler's scathingly funny depiction of the self-righteous hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life was hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement."