Liza of Lambeth: A Quick Read edition

Discover a new way to read classics with Quick Read.
This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter.
- Reading time of the complete text: about 3 hours
- Reading time of the summarized text: 7 minutes

"Liza of Lambeth" is the first novel written by W. Somerset Maugham while he was a medical student and obstetric clerk at St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth, London. The novel depicts the short life and death of Liza Kemp, an 18-year-old factory worker who lives with her aging mother in the fictional Vere Street off Westminster Bridge Road in Lambeth. The action covers a period of roughly four months from August to November in a year in the 1890s. Liza is very popular with all the residents of Vere Street, Lambeth, and likes Tom, a boy her age, but not as much as he likes her, so she rejects him when he proposes. Liza feels attracted to Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of 5 who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and they start a secret love affair. The situation deteriorates completely when Mrs. Blakeston, who is pregnant again, opposes Jim's affair with Liza by refusing to talk to him, then goes around telling other people what she would do with Liza if she caught her, and those people inform Liza, who is frightened. Liza is publicly stigmatised as a "wrong one" after a fight with Mrs. Blakeston, and she dies after a miscarriage. A musical based albeit loosely on the novel was written by Willie Rushton and Berny Stringle, with music by Cliff Adams.