书名：Collected Short Stories Volume 4毛姆短篇故事集4
作者：William Somerset Maugham
出版社名称：Vintage Classics 
出版时间：2000
语种：英文
ISBN：9780099428862
商品尺寸：13.0 x3.5 x 19.7 cm
包装：平装
页数：562 （以实物为准）

Collected Short Stories Volume 4《毛姆短篇故事集4》本书收录作者以世间爱恨离愁为素材创作的精选短篇小说30篇。爱恨离愁，仿佛是怎么也不会过时的题材。这一刻，放下所有，悦读世界……
推荐理由：
1.毛姆被誉为“英国的莫泊桑”，是二十世纪一位会讲故事的作家；
2.呈现世间爱恨情愁，人生百态，篇篇幽默风趣，讽刺意味浓；
3.作品结构严谨，起承转落自然，语言简洁，叙述娓娓动听；
4.英文原版无删减，有助于提高文学素养和英文水平。
Collected Short Stories Volume 4is a collection ofSomerset Maugham’s 30 famous short stories, such as “The book-bag”, “Episode”, “The lotus eater”, “Masterson,” andso on.
If all else perish, there will remain a storyteller’s world that is exclusively and forever Maugham—The Times

《毛姆短篇故事集4》毛姆将笔锋一转，转向人世间情情爱爱，生生死死等复杂情绪。笔下的世俗男女在一幕幕凛冽的人间短剧中出演了一个个令人难以忘怀的角色。人性弱点无时不在准确透视之下，人际关系被一次次地冷冷剖析。在各种光怪陆离的场景中，迷失的人性引发了一连串的悲剧。
This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham’s unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range fromThe Lotus Eater in which a man has a vision of a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales ofThe Outstation andThe Back of Beyond in Malaya and South East Asia. Largely set in favorite Maugham country, this colorful collection brilliantly evokes the numbered days of the British Empire.

威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆，英国小说家、戏剧家。生于律师家庭。父母早死，由伯父接回英国抚养。原来学医，后转而致力写作。他的作品常以冷静、客观乃至挑剔的态度审视人生，基调超然，带讽刺和怜悯意味，在国内外拥有大量读者。代表作有戏剧《圈子》长篇小说《人生的枷锁》《月亮和六便士》，短篇小说集《叶的震颤》《卡苏里那树》《阿金》等。
William Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. The success of his first novel,Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature.Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 ofThe Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographicalThe Summing Up andA Writer's Notebook. 

Preface
The book-bag
French Joe
German Harry
The four Dutchmen
The back of beyond
P. & O.
Episode
The kite
A woman of fifty
Mayhew
The lotus eater
Salvatore
The wash-tub
A man with a conscience
An official position
Winter cruise
Mabel
Masterson
PrincessSeptember
A marriage of convenience
Mirage
The letter
The outstation
The portrait of a gentleman
Raw material
Straight flush
The end of the flight
A casual affair
Red
Neil MacAdam

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tires me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw’s Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. A one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller’s list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without—who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and thesigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him?—and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the print-pot.