William Somerset Maugham

The British novelist William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), one of the most popular writers in English in the 20th century, is noted for his clarity of style and skill in storytelling.

Born in Paris, on Jan. 25, 1874, where his father was solicitor to the British embassy, Somerset Maugham was orphaned by the time he was 8 years old. He was reared by a paternal uncle, a clergyman, and at 13 was sent to king's School, Cambridge, intended for Oxford and preparation for the Church. Wanting to write, he obtained his uncle's permission to go to Heidelberg for a time. He chose the profession of medicine and spent 6 years in training at a London hospital. A year as an intern in the Lambeth slums followed, but he never practiced. For 10 years he wrote and lived in poverty in Paris.

In 1907 Maugham's first play, Lady Frederick, was successfully produced, and he became known as an author. In the early 1930s he settled in the Villa Mauresque in the south of France, though he continued to travel widely. He was forced to flee the Nazis in 1940 but returned after the war. In 1954, on his eightieth birthday, he was made a Companion of Honour. In 1961 he was named honorary senator of Heidelberg University. Maugham died in Nice on Dec. 16, 1965. Maugham archives were established in the Yale University Library.

The titles of some of Maugham's early novels were familiar to a whole generation of readers: Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ashenden: or, The British Agent (1938), and Cakes and Ale: or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930). A later novel that had something of the same success was The Razor's Edge (1944). Among his plays, perhaps best known and much produced was Rain (1922). An early autobiography is The Summing Up (1938). Praised by some critics for his craftsmanship and professionalism, he wrote much on the subject of fiction: Essays—Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948); A Writer's Notebook (1949); and The Art of Fiction (1955). His Travel Books appeared in 1955; The Magician, A Novel, Together with a Fragment of Autobiography in 1956; and essays titled Points of View in 1958. In his last years he worked on an autobiography to be published posthumously.

Productive throughout a long life, Maugham is still regarded as having done his great work in the early, largely autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage. Though his work was popular, he had a great many enemies because of his apparently malicious portraits of living people (for example, the characters based on Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole in Cakes and Ale) and because his view of humanity seemed to be one of contempt or of patronizing tolerance. He replied to the latter charge that humanity was like that; he also said that his sympathies were limited and that he had never felt some of the fundamental emotions.

Further Reading

A good introduction to Maugham's works is The Maugham Reader (1952). Biographical and critical studies include Cyril Connolly, The Condemned Playground (1946); John Brophy, Somerset Maugham (1952); Karl G. Pfeiffer, W. Somerset Maugham: A Candid Portrait (1959); and Richard A. Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study (1961). □

William Somerset Maugham , 1874-1965, English writer, b. Paris. He was noted as an expert storyteller and a master of fiction technique. An introverted child afflicted with a stammer, Maugham was orphaned at 10 and sent to live with his uncle, a vicar. Although he later studied medicine and completed his internship, he never practiced, having decided at an early age to devote himself to literature. He lived in grand style, spending much of his life on the French Riviera and traveling widely, particularly to East Asia and the South Pacific. Maugham wrote with wit and irony, frequently expressing an aloofly cynical attitude toward life. Famous as a dramatist before he became known for his novels and short stories, he achieved his first success with the sardonically humorous play Lady Frederick (1907). This was followed by a series of commercial successes, the best being The Circle (1921), Our Betters (1923), and The Constant Wife (1927).

Maugham had written eight novels before his breakthrough masterpiece, the partly autobiographical Of Human Bondage (1915), appeared. It is the story of the painful growth to self-realization of a lonely, sensitive young physician with a clubfoot. His experiences as a World War I spy in Russia are reflected in Ashenden: Or, the British Agent (1928), a work that strongly influenced such later writers as Graham Greene , Ian Fleming , and John le Carré . Maugham's other famous novels include The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of the French painter Paul Gauguin ; Cakes and Ale (1930), satirizing Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole ; and The Razor's Edge (1944), dealing with a young American's search for spiritual fulfillment. Frequently his writings, notably the short stories "Rain" and "The Letter," use as background the exotic places he had visited. In his later work Maugham limited himself primarily to essays; The Art of Fiction: An Introduction to Ten Novels and Their Authors (1955) is representative.

Bibliography: See biographies by T. Morgan (1980), A. Loss (1988), R. Calder (1989), and J. Meyers (2004).

Maugham, W(illiam) Somerset (1874–1965), English novelist and dramatist. He trained as a doctor and was well known as a novelist before his first play A Man of Honour was produced in 1904. The height of his achievement as a playwright was reached in 1908, when he had four plays running in London—Lady Frederick (NY, 1908), Jack Straw (NY, 1908), Mrs Dot (NY, 1910), and The Explorer (NY, 1912). For the next 25 years he was prolific and, at least with the comedies of manners which formed the bulk of his output, fashionable. The comedies grew more pointed in their social and sexual observation with Our Betters (NY, 1917; London, 1923), about social climbing; The Circle (London and NY, 1921), usually considered his best play, in which a woman who deserted her son finds that his wife is about to do the same 30 years later; The Constant Wife (NY, 1926; London, 1927); and The Breadwinner (1930; NY, 1931). He also wrote the melodrama The Letter (London and NY, 1927), based on his own short story, and serious plays such as The Sacred Flame (NY, 1928; London, 1929), about mercy killing, and For Services Rendered (1932; NY, 1933), about post-war disillusionment. After the comparative failure of Sheppey (1933; NY, 1944), another serious play in which a barber who wins a fortune tries to put Christ's precepts on wealth-sharing into action, Maugham stopped writing for the theatre. Several of his nondramatic works were adapted for the stage by other writers, notably his short stories Rain (1922) and Jane (1947), the latter by S. N. Behrman.

Maugham, [William] Somerset (1874–1965), playwright and novelist. The English author was one of his era's finest writers of high comedy. His first play to reach America was Jack Straw, which Charles Frohman presented in 1908 at the Empire Theatre with John Drew as star. The producer's high reputation, coupled with the great stars he cast in the plays, gave a special, added cachet to such early works as Lady Frederick (1908), Mrs. Dot (1910), and Smith (1910). However, Maugham's four best works are generally considered to be the knowing comedies Our Betters (1917), Too Many Husbands (1919), The Circle (1921), and The Constant Wife (1926). His melodrama, The Letter (1927), was also a major success. One of the great hits of the 1920s, Rain, was dramatized by other writers from one of his short stories.

Maugham, (William) Somerset (1874–1965) British novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist, b. France. He achieved fame initially as a dramatist with plays such as Lady Frederick (1912) and The Circle (1921). Maugham's first successful novel was the semi-autobiographical Of Human Bondage (1915). Other novels include The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Cakes and Ale (1930). His experiences in British intelligence in World War I informs the short-story collection Ashenden (1928).