Liza of Lambeth

Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, offers insight into the everyday lives of working-class Londoners at the turn of the twentieth century. Liza Kemp is an eighteen-year-old girl working in a factory in the Lambeth slum along London's Vere Street. As Liza enters into a misguided affair with an older, married man, Jim Blakeston, the novel reveals the tragedies and abuses suffered by those living in poverty. A mood of subdued resignation prevails in this novel, which sparked the literary career of one of England's most successful authors of the twentieth century.