Literature / Writers Datebook: January 25
Brief biography of the life and works of English
writer William Somerset Maugham, known for his novels, plays and short stories. Famous for his novel Of Human Bondage.
Early Years
William Somerset Maugham (b. 25 January 1874 – d. 16 December 1965), was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. He was born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, then schooled in England and went to a German university. In London he became a medical student and qualified as a physician in 1897 but he never practised medicine, instead, he became a full-time writer.
His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.
Writings and Writing Style
Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have been adapted for radio, cinema and television. His great popularity and prodigious sales provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to belittle him as merely competent. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage – a book with a large autobiographical element – as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard. Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in Baruch Spinoza's Ethics: "The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master ... so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he see the better before him." Maugham's plain prose style became known for its lucidity, but his reliance on clichés attracted adverse critical comment. Maugham was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.
First World War Years
Maugham worked for the British Secret Service during the First World War. He later drew on his experiences for stories published in the 1920s. Although primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day. After a three-year affair with Syrie Wellcome which produced their daughter, Liza, they married in 1917. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. Together they made extended visits to Asia, the South Seas and other destinations. Maugham gathered material for his fiction wherever they went. They lived together in the French Riviera, where Maugham entertained lavishly. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for the rest of the author's life.
Maugham gave up writing novels shortly after the Second World War. He died at the age of 91.
Legacy
Although most of Maugham's early successes were as a playwright, it is
for his novels and short stories that he has been best known. He was a prolific writer: between 1902 and 1933 he had 32 plays staged,
and between 1897 and 1962 he published 19 novels, nine volumes of short
stories, and non-fiction books covering travel, reminiscences, essays
and extracts from his notebooks.
William Somerset Maugham's works sold prodigiously throughout the English-speaking world.
Works by William Somerset Maugham
Liza of Lambeth 1897
Image Credit:
W. Somerset Maugham. Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain. (Maugham by Carl Van Vechten, 1934)
Resources:
Great British Writers, Colour Library Books (1993)
Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)
Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. 3rd Ed, ed. by Jennifer Uglow (1999)
W. Somerset Maugham. en.wikipedia.org.
(c) January 25, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
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