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". . . One of the most gifted literary craftsmen of his age . . . a man of generous impulses and free from conceit, he is quite willing to admit outsiders into his workshop and to show them 'what materials he thought worth gathering, and how he gathered them . . . "
                                                                                        --Harold Nicolosn, The Observer

"I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller," Somerset Maugham wrote in 1947 in Creatures of Circumstance. "It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude."

The stories Maugham spins in The Trembling of a Leaf are some of his best. Born in Paris, the son of a British embassy official, Maugham attended Heidelberg University and then studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. Although officially qualifying as a doctor in 1897, the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, promised a life more alluring. By 1904, four of his plays were running simultaneously and his novels were also selling.

After working in British Intelligence during World War I, he set off to regain his health by traveling to Asia, Mexico, and the Pacific Islands. During this trip he gather materials and wrote the stories that appeared in 1921 in The Trembling of a Leaf.

"Rain," the most famous of the stories in the book, was purportedly inspired by a missionary and prostitute that were among his fellow passengers on a voyage to Pago Pago. The story was first adapted for the stage by John Colton and Clemence Randolph in 1922. Then it became a twice-told tale on film, first as Sadie Thompson in 1928 starring Lionel Barrymore and Gloria Swanson, and was then remade in 1932 with the original title Rain with Joan Crawford in the leading role.

In many ways the successful adaptations of "Rain" has devalued the other stories in the collection which are quite provoking as well. "Macintosh" is an interesting study in the dynamic of two officials as seen through the eyes of the junior. "The Fall of Edward Barnard" is a precursor in a sense to a longer and more recognized work, The Razor's Edge.

We think fans of tropical tales will find much to admire in all of these stories.