The illustrated version of W. Somerset Maugham's Princess September and the Nightingale was originally published in 1939 by Oxford University Press. Long out of print, it is now reissued with the original text and illustrations. The story is a classic tale of Siam (now Thailand), one of the few available that portray this culture. It is a sophisticated fairy tale about the nightingale that belonged to the ninth daughter of the King of Siam, and brought good luck to her, but not to her eight envious sisters. The sisters nearly bring about the bird's death by a mean trick, but its life is saved and its mistress grows up to be very beautiful and marry a splendid prince. The characters, despite their royal titles, are very human—including the king, who has the laudable habit of giving presents on his own birthday. Booklist said of the original "Richard C. Jones...has provided precisely the right pictures, large and small, brilliant in color, delicately humorous in design, and one of the most decorative picture books of the season results." Library Journal said, "The format is outstanding." The New Yorker 's 1939 children's book roundup called it "the most notable children's reprint of the season."
Author
William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style. His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays. Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way. During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
