William somerset maugham biography

“It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many” 

Born in the British Embassy in Paris, William Somerset Maugham was orphaned at a young age and sent to live with his emotionally cold Uncle, the Rev. Henry Maugham in Whitstable, Kent.  His uncertain English and French accent, (he had grown up with French as his first language) and short stature led to a miserable time at King’s School, Canterbury, which in turn led to a marked stammer, and he subsequently developed an acerbic wit [which he carried on into his writing] as a defence mechanism. 

Not wanting to follow the rest of his family into practicing law, he studied medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital, graduating in   Living and working in Lambeth gave him the material for his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, in which he depicted the life and death of a factory girl at the turn of the century in graphic detail.  The book’s success encouraged Maugham to turn to writing as a full time career and he wrote several novels, short stories and plays in quick succession.  In his play Lady Frederick became a huge success and by he had four plays running simultaneously in London.  He began writing what was to become his most famous novel, Of Human Bondage in although its completion was interrupted by the outbreak WWI when he joined a Red Cross ambulance unit in France.  Although often considered an autobiographical novel, Maugham wrote of it  "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention.".  He considered himself to have an acute power of observation and he used his experiences in military intelligence during WWI and his travels through the South Pacific Islands, to write Ashenden and The Moon and Sixpence.  After the war Maugham moved to the south of France with his long term lover Gerald Haxton, and he continued to writ

I still possess my Penguin paperback of Somerset Maugham's A Writer's Notebook. Ostensibly a distillation of his diary, kept over some 50 years, it was more interesting to the aspiring novelist for the gnomic advice Maugham offered on the craft of writing. "There's no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like," is one sentence I underlined (among many). I cite this for two reasons: one to give a sense of Maugham's stature and reputation, even in the late s, just a few years after his death; and, two, as a tribute to his astonishing longevity.

Maugham died aged 91 in – a few months before Evelyn Waugh – but he was born in , the year Disraeli took over as prime minister from Gladstone. He was writing his fourth novel in , the last year of Victoria's reign (some three years before Waugh was born, as it happens) and so in a very real sense his sensibilities are Victorian rather than Edwardian. His peers were writers such as Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, John Galsworthy – forgotten figures, almost – but something about Maugham and his work endured long into his dotage. There was no real sense of anything "retro" about him.

Perhaps this was due in some way to the so-called "cynicism" in his novels and stories, something that was found shocking at the beginning of his career, but that chimed more harmoniously with modern readers, increasingly cynical themselves, towards its conclusion. But it was also a consequence of Maugham's reputation, of his standing as a "great writer", of the manner in which he chose to live.

The abiding image is of Maugham in his vast villa on Cap Ferrat – the Villa Mauresque – filled with famous guests and 13 staff, the writer spending his mornings at work in his bespoke writing rooms on the flat roof with a wide view of the Mediterranean (where he could spot fellow novelist Arnold Bennett cruisi

He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the most famous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own true story has never been fully told. At last, the fascinating truth is revealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer Selina Hastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personal correspondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his only child, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity, and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage.

Hastings vividly presents Maugham’s lonely childhood spent with unloving relatives after the death of his parents, a trauma that resulted in shyness, a stammer, and for the rest of his life an urgent need for physical tenderness. Here, too, are his adult triumphs on the stage and page, works that allowed him a glittering social life in which he befriended and sometimes fell out with such luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, D. H. Lawrence, and Winston Churchill.

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham portrays in full for the first time Maugham’s disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, a manipulative society woman of dubious morality who trapped Maugham with a pregnancy and an attempted suicide. Hastings also explores Maugham’s many affairs with men, including his great love, Gerald Haxton, an alcoholic charmer and a cad. Maugham’s courageous work in secret intelligence during two world wars is described in fascinating detail—experiences that provided the inspiration for the groundbreaking Ashenden stories. From the West End to Broadway, from China to the South Pacific, Maugham’s restless and remarkably productive life is thrillingly recounted as Hastings uncovers the real stories behind such classics as “Rain,” The Painted Veil, Cakes & Ale, and other well-known tales.

An epic biography of a hugely talented

English playwright and author (–)

William Somerset MaughamCH (MAWM; 25 January – 16 December ) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in , after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.

Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (), The Moon and Sixpence (), The Painted Veil (), Cakes and Ale () and The Razor's Edge (). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree () and The Mixture as Before (); 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's plain prose style became known for its lucidity, but his reliance on clichés attracted adverse critical comment.

During the First World War Maugham worked for the British Secret Service, later drawing on his experiences for stories published in the s. 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 The marriage lasted for twelve years, b