Books

First Edition. First Issue. Signed presentation copy from Maugham to Harpo Marx. Inscribed by the author: �For Harpo Marx, W. Somerset Maugham, this book which I like myself�. From the library of Harpo Marx, the great clown of the Marx Brothers comedy team, and his wife actress Susan Fleming Marx, former member of the Ziegfeld Follies and star of early talking films like Million Dollar Legs with W.C. Fields. Near fine copy with a hint of edge wear in a near fine dust jacket with some minor repair to the top edge by an expert paper conservationist. With a charming bookplate illustrated by Susan Marx with a drawing of Harpo in his comic character which reads: �FROM THE LIBRARY OF HARPO & SUSAN MARX.� Harpo Marx first became friends with Maugham in the late 1920s when Alexander Woollcott took Harpo to Maugham�s home, the Villa Mauresque, on the French Riviera.

Cakes and Ale is a satirical novel by W. Somerset Maugham, revolving around the lives, relationships, and social hypocrisies of the literary elite in England.