Maugham’s The Painted Veil tells the story of the focal female character, Kitty Fane, and her adulterous affair which results in her husband’s revenge; forcing her to accompany him to the centre of a cholera epidemic. It is considered a literary classic and has been adapted to films thrice in America: two under the exact same name in both 1934 and 2006, and one repackaged as ‘The Seventh Sin’ in 1957.
Before its publication as a book in 1925, The Painted Veil had originally been serialised the previous year, both in Nash’s magazine in London and in the American publication Hearst’s International Magazine in New York. Unlike the unaltered American First Trade Edition released by Doran on March 20th; the bibliographic history of this First English edition, originally released by Heinemann on April 23rd, is quite complex due to two threatened libel actions which caused drastic alterations in the text and necessitated its reissue due to these censorship complications.
In Great Britain, where this First English Edition was printed, the main character’s surname was already a point of contention during Nash’s publication in 1924. Several readers had threatened to sue for libel since they shared the last name ‘Lane’ with the protagonists. After settling the lawsuit, Maugham had decided to change the characters’ names to ‘Forr’ during the run of the English serialisation, before finally settling on the name ‘Fane’ in the later First English publication in book form, which was printed in two runs of 4,000 copies each.
In the course of its publication, the first issue was recalled and ordered to be scrapped when faced with similar libel charges by the Assistant Secretary of the Hong Kong Government who protested the setting of the novel, what with the direct reference to the state itself and the possible political implications behind the story.
Unfortunately, out of the initial 8000 copies, 4000 had already been disseminated and needed to be recollected. Yet 74 copies —most of which were review copies— still remain in existence, making up this practically unobtainable first issue of the First English Edition. Thus, the preface (Fig 1) of this second Heinemann issue, where Maugham revealed the intricacies of having used certain names, was kept in all subsequent versions of the book.
Fig 1: Preface/Author’s Note
In the first issue of the English Edition, the text was in its unaltered form where Maugham directly quoted many real-life locations such as ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Happy Valley’, ‘The Peak’ (Victoria Peak) and ‘Kowloon’ which led to the eventual lawsuit due to its false depiction of these places and the misunderstandings that could arise from it.
Fig 2: Library Edition, without dust cover
Fig 3: Original Edition, with dust cover
However, in this second issue (Fig 2), Maugham cleverly adapted these location names and henceforth referred to them as ‘Tching-Yen’, ‘Pleasant Valley’, ‘The Mount’ and ‘Lushan’ respectively. All references to ‘Canton’ (Guangzhou) have also been removed due to its proximity to Hong Kong. Even though Maugham had changed the names to avoid allegations, he later admitted in 1934 that he was indeed inspired by the events witnessed during his voyage to China, which directly led to the creation of this book and raises the question of whether this kind of censorship was necessary at all.
Prepared by Aedrie