3. William Somerset Maugham was
an English 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
4. W. Somerset
Maugham was born
in Paris as the sixth
and youngest son of
the solicitor to the
British embassy. He
learned French as
his native tongue.
At the age of 10
Maugham was
orphaned and sent
to England to live
with his uncle, the
vicar of Whitestable
5. Educated at
King's School,
Canterbury, and
Heidelberg
University in
Germany,
Maugham then
studied six
years medicine
in London. He
qualified in 1897
as a doctor
from St.
Thomas'
medical school
6. He abandoned medicine after the success of his
first novels and plays but he studied the craft of
writing as assiduously as he had medicine, often
writing out passages of other novelists. He never
owned a typewriter but wrote everything by hand.
He eventually developed a habit of writing four
hours each morning
7. Marriage & Personal Life
By this time, his homosexuality had become
known to everyone and he was often dragged
into controversies for to his sexual orientation.
Nonetheless, he also had affairs with many
women among which the most enduring was
with Syrie Wellcome, wife of American-born
Englishman Henry Wellcome. His romance with
Syrie resulted in a daughter Liza and Syrie's
divorce with his husband Henry. In May 1917,
Maugham married Syrie accepting Liza as his
daughter. The marriage became strained due to
his contemptuous relationship with Haxton and
they divorced around 1927
8. Maugham then lived in Paris for ten
years as a struggling young author.
In 1897 his first novel, LIZA OF
LAMBERT appeared. His first play,
A MAN OF HONOUR was produced
in 1903. Four of his plays ran
simultaneously in London in 1904
9. Maugham's breakthrough novel was the semiautobiographical OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1915), which
is usually considered his outstanding achievement. It
made him the most popular author of his time. During
World War I he was a volunteer ambulance driver, one
of the so called Literary Ambulance Drivers of the day.
In 1928 he purchased Mauresque (a word meaning 'of
Moorish style'), a villa on the Riviera in the south of
France overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. In the early
part of 1938 Maugham Travels in India, meeting Sri
Ramana Maharshi, who he later used as a model for the
holy man in his novel The Razor’s Edge. As the the Nazi
military juggernaut thrust across the border into
France, Maugham, like thousands of others, was forced
to become a refugee, albeit, a fairly well off refugee.
Under the auspices of his American publisher Nelson
Doubleday, he settled in the United States for the
duration of the war, first in South Carolina then in
Hollywood, California. With the end of hostilities he
returned to Mauresque and it remained his home till the
end of his days
10. W. Somerset Maugham lived to
be 91 years of age. He passed
away December 16th, 1965. He
had lived in Victorian England,
turn of the century America,
Europe between the wars, and
seen the invention of movies,
radio, and television --- briefly
summing it all up somewhat
with his own words in Looking
Back. All the while he traveled
the world, rubbed shoulders
with the richest and the most
famous people of the day, put
together a private art collection
of Impressionist paintings that
was the envy of all who saw it,
and observed the human
condition in all its myriad forms
11. Hollywood loves W. Somerset Maugham. More
than the works of most other twentieth-century
writers, Maugham’s plays, novels, and short
stories have been adapted into films. In part,
this was attributable to his enormous output,
but it is even more closely tied to his enduring
popularity. That popularity and the lucrative
financial benefits that it brought had a negative
impact on Maugham’s literary reputation. A
writer who was too often written off as well
liked rather than well respected, Maugham
frequent joked about his own apparent
inferiority. Yet, despite his modesty, Maugham
created a body of work characterized by
incredible range. While he was known for fluffy
tales like Theatre (which was adapted into the
2004 film Being Julia), his dark, late-career
novel The Razor’s Edge proved Maugham was
an author of substance
12. Essential Facts
• Although of British descent, Maugham was born in
Paris. To prevent Maugham from being drafted into the
military under French law, Maugham’s father arranged for
his son to be born on British Embassy grounds.
• Despite his gift with language on the page, Maugham
suffered from a severe stutter throughout his life.
• Maugham was one of the “Literary Ambulance Drivers”
of World War I. The moniker was a slang term for the
unusually high number of literary greats (such as Ernest
Hemingway and E. E. Cummings) who served as
ambulance drivers during the war.
• Maugham briefly did intelligence work at the end of the
First World War. The written account of his experiences
was highly influential on Ian Fleming, creator of James
Bond.
• For half a decade, Maugham studied medicine. Though
the experience would continue to influence his writing for
the rest of his life, it was particularly crucial to his first
and highly successful novel, Liza of Lambeth
13. The most popular novels
• Liza of Lambeth (1897)
• The Moon and Sixpence (1919 )
• The Painted Veil (1925)
• Cakes and Ale or, the Skeleton
in the Cupboard (1930)
• Theatre (1937)
• The Razor’s Edge (1944)
14. Liza of Lambeth was W.
Somerset Maugham's first
novel, which he wrote
while working as a doctor
at a hospital in Lambeth,
then a working class
district of London. It
depicts the short life and
death of Liza Kemp, an 18year-old factory worker
who lives together with her
aging mother in Vere Street
(obviously fictional) off
Westminster Bridge Road
(real) in Lambeth. All in all,
it gives the reader an
interesting insight into the
everyday lives of working
class Londoners at the turn
of the century
15. The Moon and Sixpence
is a novel by W. Somerset
Maugham, told in
episodic form by the firstperson narrator as a
series of glimpses into
the mind and soul of the
central character, Charles
Strickland, a middle-aged
English stockbroker who
abandons his wife and
children abruptly to
pursue his desire to
become an artist. The
story is said to be loosely
based on the life of the
painter Paul Gauguin
16. The Painted Veil is a 2006 ChineseAmerican drama film directed by
John Curran. The screenplay by Ron
Nyswaner is based on the 1925 novel
of the same title by W. Somerset
Maugham. Edward Norton, Naomi
Watts, Toby Jones, Anthony Wong
Chau Sang and Liev Schreiber
appear in the leading roles.This is
the third Film adaptation of the
Maugham book, following a 1934 film
starring Herbert Marshall and Greta
Garbo and a 1957 version called The
Seventh Sin with Bill Travers and
Eleanor Parker
17. Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the
Cupboard is a novel by British author
William Somerset Maugham. It is often
alleged to be a thinly veiled roman a
clef examining contemporary novelists
Thomas Hardy (as Edward Driffield)
and Hugh Walpole (as Alroy Kear) —
though Maugham maintained he had
created both characters as composites
and in fact explicitly denies any
connection to Hardy in his own
introduction to later editions of the
novel. Maugham exposes the
misguided social snobbery leveled at
the character Rosie Driffield (Edward's
first wife), whose frankness, honesty
and sexual freedom make her a target
of conservative propriety. Her
character is treated favourably by the
book's narrator, Ashenden, who
understands her sexual energy to be a
muse to the many artists who
surround her
18. In Theatre, W. Somerset Maugham–the author of the
classic novels Of Human Bondage and Up at the Villa–
introduces us to Julia Lambert, a woman of
breathtaking poise and talent whose looks have stood
by her forty-six years. She is one of the greatest
actresses England–so good, in fact, that perhaps she
never stops acting
19. The Razor’s Edge is a book by W.
Somerset Maugham published in 1944.
Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a
razor is difficult to pass over; thus the
wise say the path to Salvation is hard,"
taken from a verse in the KathaUpanishad. The Razor’s Edge tells the
story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot
traumatized by his experiences in World
War I, who sets off in search of some
transcendent meaning in his life. The
story begins through the eyes of Larry’s
friends and acquaintances as they
witness his personality change after the
War. His rejection of conventional life
and search for meaningful experience
allows him to thrive while the more
materialistic characters suffer reversals
of fortune. The book was twice adapted
into film, first in 1946 starring Tyrone
Power and Gene Tierney, and Herbert
Marshall as Maugham, and then a 1984
adaptation starring Bill Murray
