The Hero

I'm surprised that so few people have read Maugham's early novel, 'The Hero.' Published only four years after 'Liza of Lambeth', which struck me as wholly un-Maughamesque, 'The Hero' contains the essence of everything Maugham would become. The protagonist, James Parson, returns home wounded after the Boer War. Before leaving with the forces, he became engaged to simple, honest Mary, but now, five years later, he has seen enough of the world to know that he cannot marry her - he does not love her. So much of this sounds like the plot of 'The Razor's Edge,' and the similarities with that novel and others in the Maugham oeuvre are impossible to ignore. And then there is that uniquely Maughamesque quality - wit coupled with deep, show more intellectual insight - that runs through this novel just as it would elsewhere in Maugham's career. All in all, a fascinating, worthwhile read, and not one purely for the completist. show less

[Preface to Liza of Lambeth, Heinemann, The Collected Edition, 1934:]

The next novel I published was called The Hero. It was suggested by the Boer War and influenced by my study of the French novelists. It was grim and uncompromising and I should think very dull. I have never read it since I corrected the proofs, for I have an almost unconquerable distaste for opening one of my books when it has been written; I only remember that my admiration of Flaubert led me to write long descriptions of scenery. I have learnt since that there is nothing so tedious. I think it is a very good rule to limit such descriptions to three lines. If a writer in that space cannot give an adequate picture of a scene he had better leave it to the reader's show more imagination. The book was very well reviewed, but neglected by the public and I made out of it no more than the seventy-five founds my publishers had paid me as an advance on royalties. I think it was an honest piece of work, I know that I took a great deal of trouble to make it as good as I could, but of course I still knew very little of my art. I have a notion that now I could get the whole subject into a short story. I had written Mrs Craddock some time before, but had been unable for a long while to get anyone to accept it. show less