Bishop's Apron

Theodore Spratte has a problem: he's already a canon, already respectable, already convinced of his own greatness. What he doesn't have is a bishopric. And in Edwardian England, where the Church of England runs on influence and image, a man with neither must manufacture both. Maugham's early satirical novel follows this pompous clergyman as he embellishes his ancestry, maneuvers through ecclesiastical politics, and most catastrophically, interferes in his children's romantic lives with the same heavy hand he uses on everything else. The result is a deliciously uncomfortable comedy of manners, where every social humiliation Spratte endures is matched by one he inflicts. Maugham trains his gimlet eye on the petty vanities of the clerical class, exposing the gap between spiritual office and worldly ambition. For readers who love sharp social comedy in the vein of Evelyn Waugh, this is a portrait of one man's grandiose self-regard colliding spectacularly with reality.