Unit 3

 

Biography

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

William Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.

After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time.

During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the  Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, a biographical novel that deals with the life of the main character, who, like Maugham, was orphaned, and brought up by his uncle. Two of his later novels were based on historical people: The Moon and Sixpence is about the life of Paul Gauguin; and Cakes and Ale contains characterizations of the authors Thomas Hardy (who had died two years previously) and Hugh Walpole. Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation" are considered especially notable.

William Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France on 16 December 1965(1965-12-16) (aged 91).