Maugham, W. Somerset

Maugham, W. Somerset ( William Somerset Maugham) (1874–1965), novelist and playwright, born in Paris. His mother died when he was 8, and his father in 1884. He trained as a doctor in London. His first ‘new realist’ novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), drew on his experiences of slum life as an obstetric clerk. He achieved fame with the production of Lady Frederick (1907), a comedy of marriage and money. In 1908 he had four plays running simultaneously in London. In 1911 he met Syrie Wellcome, daughter of Dr Barnardo, whom he married in 1917; they spent most of their time apart. In 1914 he met Gerald Haxton, who became his secretary and companion. In 1916 they set out on the first of many journeys together: to the South Seas, China, south-east Asia, and Mexico. In 1926 Maugham bought a house at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, which became a meeting place for writers and politicians.

Among Maugham's plays should be mentioned Our Betters (1917), a satire on title-hunting Americans; The Circle (1921); East of Suez (1922); The Constant Wife (1926); and For Services Rendered (1932), an anti-war play. His best-known novel is a thinly disguised autobiography, Of Human Bondage (1915), which describes Philip Carey's lonely boyhood and his subsequent adventures. The Moon and Sixpence (1919) recounts the life of Charles Strickland, a Gauguinesque artist who neglects duty for art. Cakes and Ale (1930), his most genial book, is a comedy about the good-natured Rosie Driffield, the wife of a Grand Old Man of Letters whom most took to be based on Hardy; Alroy Kear, a self-promoting writer, was recognized as Hugh Walpole. Maugham's last important novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), takes a mystical turn; its American hero, Larry Darrell, goes to India, stays in an ashram, and learns the value of non-attachment. A Writer's Notebook (1949) consists of extracts from notes which Maugham kept from the age of 18 and shows him as sharp, worldly, and observant.

Of his short stories, particular mention should be made of ‘Rain’ (in The Trembling of a Leaf, 1921), which relates the conflict between a life-affirming American prostitute, Sadie Thompson, and a repressed Scottish missionary, Davidson, and ends with Davidson's suicide. It is characteristic of Maugham's work in its remarkable and economical evocation of the atmosphere of hot, wet, tropical Samoa, and its neat twist of plot; it was staged successfully and has been filmed three times.

Despite his worldly success and great popularity as a writer, Maugham felt he was not considered seriously, and the view expressed in his autobiography, The Summing Up (1938), that he stood ‘in the very first row of the second-raters’, has been largely endorsed by literary critics.