W. Somerset Maugham

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W. Somerset Maugham as photographed in 1934 by Carl Van Vechten.

W. Somerset Maugham, born William Somerset Maugham (January 25, 1874 Paris, France – December 16, 1965 Nice, France) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer, reputedly the highest paid author of the 1930s.

He was born to English parents living in France, who arranged in advance for their child's birth to occur at the British embassy in Paris, so that it would be technically true - as a legal nicety, despite geography - that he was born in Britain. Despite his origins, he spoke only French until he was orphaned at eleven and was sent to live with his surviving family in Whitstable, England - he became a pupil at the King's School, Canterbury. Maugham wrote comedies, psychological novels and spy stories (although the latter part of his work is hardly ever seen as belonging to crime fiction proper). Prior to his literary success, he studied literature and philosophy at Heidelberg University, then medicine in London, qualifying from St. Thomas' hospital in 1897. During World War I, Maugham served as a spy for MI6, being sent to Russia with the mission of preventing the Russian Revolution by keeping the Mensheviks in power, after a stint working as a British Red Cross ambulance driver, in which capacity he met Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan who would allegedly become Maugham's homosexual lover until Haxton's 1944 death. Maugham subsequently lived with Alan Searle.

Maugham spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations of his books) and later in the South. While in the US, he was encouraged by the British government to make patriotic speeches to impel the US to help Britain, if not get involved in the war effort. After the war, he moved back to England, and then to his villa in France, where he lived - except for his frequent and long travels - until his death.

Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. He enjoyed travelling widely, particularly to East Asia, the Pacific Islands and Mexico, often accompanied by Haxton (even while he was married). In 1926 he bought a villa on the French Riviera which would be his home for most of the rest of his life, Villa Mauresque at Cap Ferrat. Despite his triumphs, his own opinion of his abilities remained somewhat low, describing himself towards the end of his career as "in the very first row of the second-raters".

W. Somerset Maugham as photographed by George Platt Lynes.

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Maugham's severe stutter has been replaced by Philip's clubfoot.

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. The stories are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without descending into melodrama. His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley.

In 1917, in New Jersey, Maugham married his mistress, Maud Gwendolen Syrie Barnardo, a daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and former wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome. (She became celebrated as Syrie Maugham, a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s.) Divorced in 1928 after a tempestuous marriage that may have been complicated by Maugham's relationship with Haxton, they had one daughter, Elizabeth 'Liza' Mary Maugham (1915-1998).

In 1947 he instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, still given to this day to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable past winners include Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn. On his death, he donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.

His commercial success and his careful highly polished prose style virtually assured that he would be an object of scorn to many of his fellow authors. One of very few later writers to cite his influence was Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers. George Orwell also stated that his writing style was influenced by Maugham.

1 Selected Bibliography
2 External links

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Selected Bibliography

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Short Stories

"The Magician" (1908)
"Lord Mountdrago" (1939)
"A Man from Glasgow" (1947)
"Before the Party"
"The End of the Flight"
"The Facts of Life"
"Footprints in the Jungle"
"Honolulu"
"An Official Position"
"The Outstation"
"The Taipan"
"The Treasure"
"Rain"
"Three fat women from Antibes"
"Salvatore"
"The Vessel of Wrath"

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Short story collections

The Trembling of a Leaf (1921)
The Lotus Eater (1945)

Maugham also edited and finished the autobiography of the Victorian actor Sir Charles Hawtrey (1858-1923), called The Truth at Last, which was posthumously published in 1924.

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