In this, the second volume comprised of Maugham's best works, the four plays in this selection provide significant evidence of the playwright's powers as a dramatist.
For Services Rendered sheds a harrowing light on provincial middle-class England after the First World War.
The Letter, a tense drama of sexual passion set in the Malay States, shows Maugham as the colonial storyteller.
In contrast, Home and Beauty treats the marital complications of a returning war hero with Mozartian joie de vivre.
W. Somerset Maugham established his reputation as a master of the social comedy in the tradition of Oscar Wilde with Lady Frederick in 1907.