William Somerset Maugham
born Jan. 25, 1874, Paris, Fr.
died Dec. 16,
1965, Nice
English novelist, playwright, and short-story
writer whose work is characterized by a clear
unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd
understanding of human nature.
Maugham was orphaned at the age of 10; he was
brought up by an uncle and educated at King’s
School, Canterbury. After a year at Heidelberg, he
entered St. Thomas’ medical school, London, and
qualified as a doctor in 1897. He drew upon his
experiences as an obstetrician in his first novel,
Liza of Lambeth (1897), and its success, though
small, encouraged him to abandon medicine. He
traveled in Spain and Italy and in 1908 achieved a
theatrical triumph—four plays running in London at
once—that brought him financial security. During
World War I he worked as a secret agent. After the
war he resumed his interrupted travels and, in 1928,
bought a villa on Cape Ferrat in the south of
France, which became his permanent home.
His
reputation as a novelist rests primarily on four
books: Of Human Bondage (1915), a
semi-autobiographical account of a young medical
student’s painful progress toward maturity; The Moon
and Sixpence (1919), an account of an unconventional
artist, suggested by the life of Paul Gauguin; Cakes
and Ale (1930), the story of a famous novelist,
which is thought to contain caricatures of Thomas
Hardy and Hugh Walpole; and The Razor’s Edge (1944),
the story of a young American war veteran’s quest
for a satisfying way of life. Maugham’s plays,
mainly Edwardian social comedies, soon became dated,
but his short stories have increased in popularity.
Many portray the conflict of Europeans in alien
surroundings that provoke strong emotions, and
Maugham’s skill in handling plot, in the manner of
Guy de Maupassant, is distinguished by economy and
suspense. In The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer’s
Notebook (1949) Maugham explains his philosophy of
life as a resigned atheism and a certain skepticism
about the extent of man’s innate goodness and
intelligence; it is this that gives his work its
astringent cynicism.
