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Home >> Arts >> Literature >> Authors >> M >> Maugham, W. Somerset |
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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 greatest paid author of the 1930s. He was natural to English parents living in France, who intended beforehand for their tyke's birth to occur at a British embassy around Paris, so that it would become technically true - as a legal nicety, despite geography - that he was natural inside Britain. Despite his origins, he spoke simply French until he was orphaned at eleven and was sent to accept his living personal inside Whitstable, England - he became a pupil at a King's School, Canterbury. Maugham wrote comedies, psychological novels and spy stories (although the latter a share of his operate is hardly ever seen when belonging to crime fiction proper). Before his literary profits, he exposed literature and philosophy at Heidelberg University, then medicine in London, qualifying from St. Thomas' hospital within 1897. When you took World War I, Maugham served as a spy for MI6, being sent to Russia with a mission of preventing the Russian Revolution by keeping the Mensheviks in power, after the stint working as a British Red Cross ambulance driver, in which capacity he met Gerald Haxton, a immature San Franciscan who would allegedly become Maugham's homosexual lover until Haxton's 1944 death. Maugham afterwards swallow Alan Searle. Maugham spent virtually all of Globe War II around a United States, number 1 in Hollywood (he worked in several scripts, & was one of the number one authors to produce important money from either film adaptations of his books) & in the future to the south. When in a U.s.a., he was encouraged per British government to produce loyal speeches to impel the United states to help Britain, whenever does'nt acquire taking part in the war effort. Fallowing a war, he withdraw to Engl&, then to his villa within France, in which he lived - except for his frequent and hanker travels - until his dying. Commercial profits using high book sales, successful play productions and the string of film adaptations allowed Maugham to live the super comfortable life. He enjoyed traveling widely, particularly to East Asia, the Pacific Islands and Mexico, often accompanied by Haxton (possibly when he was married). Within 1926 he bought a villa on the French Riviera which would be his personal for virtually all of the rest of his life, Villa Mauresque at Cap Ferrat. Despite his triumphs, his have opinion of his abilities remained somewhat moo, describing himself towards a prevent of his career when "in the very first row of the second-raters". Maugham's masterpiece is typically in agreement to exist as Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with a life of Philip Carey, who, such as Maugham, was orphaned & brought higher by his god-fearing uncle. Maugham's severe stutter has been replaced by Philip's clubfoot. Among his short stories, a bit of of a virtually all memorable come people treating by owning the exists of american, mostly British, settler in the Far East. A stories come occasionally caring by having a emotional toll exacted on the settler by their isolation. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to choose a resultant tensions & passions forswearing descending into melodrama. His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley. Around 1917, in New Jersey, Maugham married his mistress, Maud Gwendolen Syrie Barnardo, a girl of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and former married woman of Our contries-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome. (She became celebrated when Syrie Maugham, the noted interior decorator who popularized the everthing-white room in the 1920s.) Divorced in 1928 after a tempestuous marriage that might use been complicated by Maugham's relationship using Haxton, it got a single girl, Elizabeth 'Liza' Mary Maugham (1915-1998). Within 1947 he instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, still given to this day to the better British writer or even writers under the age of thirty-5 of a function of fiction published it used to be that month. Notable retiring winners include Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn. In his dying, he donated his right of first publication to the [http://www.rlf.org.uk/ Royal Literary Fund].
His commercial profits & his careful extremely polished prose style virtually assured that he would exist as an object of scorn to numbers of of his fellow authors. One of super pack afterwards writers to cite his influence was Anthony Burgess, who involved the complex invented portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers. George Orwell also stated that his writing style was influenced by Maugham.
Selected Bibliography
Plays
Non-Fiction
Short Stories
Short story collections
Maugham as well edited & finished a autobiography of the Victorian actor Sir Charles Hawtrey (1858-1923), called A Truth at long last, which was posthumously published around 1924.
Maugham on film
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The Knitting Circle: Somerset Maugham Summary biography and bibliography from the Lesbian and Gay Staff Association of South Bank University. The Moon and Sixpence Text in HTML of "The Moon and Sixpence", with dictionary links to the Encyclopedia of the Self. Caxton Club: Somerset Maugham A biography and list of works. Spartacus: Somerset Maugham A brief biography with links to related historical information. Of Human Bondage Why Doug Shaw loves this book. William Somerset Maugham Biography, criticism, articles, links, chronology and a list of books. Razor's Edge A discussion of Razor's Edge in terms of "negative space", by Tony Mayo. The Moon and Sixpence A discussion by Edward Tanguay, of the Online Reading Club, including ample quotes. The Limits of Graciousness A discussion of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener and Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence from a Christian viewpoint. The Moon and Sixpence: contemporary review A review of The Moon and Sixpence from The Guardian, May 2, 1919. |
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