He is widely considered to be one of the greatest English writers ever. Somerset Maugham felt that his stories had to have a moral and teach people tolerance, wisdom and compassion. He achieved fame initially as a dramatist with plays such as Lady Frederick (1912) and The Circle (1921). "The Razor's Edge," which would be his last important work, was published in 1944. Although he was an important influence on many well-known writers, "Maugham's critical stock has remained low". He traveled in Spain and Italy and in 1908 achieved a theatrical triumphfour plays running in London at oncethat brought him financial security. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. [31] The first print run sold out within three weeks and a reprint was quickly arranged. Used; Condition Used - Good ISBN 13 9780140185232 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 lifestyle was modest: he felt that despite his considerable wealth he should not live luxuriously while Britain was enduring wartime privations. [8][9] The second son, Frederic, became a barrister, and had a distinguished legal career in Britain The Times described him as "a great legal figure" serving as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (19351938) and Lord Chancellor (19381939). These often convey the emotional toll that isolation exacts from the characters. The Razor's Edge, the author's last major novel,[5] is described by Sutherland as "Maugham's twentieth-century manifesto for human fulfilment", satirising Western materialism and drawing on Eastern spiritualism as a way to find meaning in existence. He wrote near the opening of the novel: "it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue". Rain by W. Somerset Maugham Analysis. [28], The book received mixed reviews. His domestic staff there comprised thirteen servants. [73], As in his novels and short stories, Maugham's plots are clear and his dialogue naturalistic. Filmed at Somerset Maugham's villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the Mediterranean, this program features the author and playwright in a far-ranging 1955 conve. Maughams plays, mainly Edwardian social comedies, soon became dated, but his short stories have increased in popularity. (293) $6.19. [37] Maugham continued to write assiduously and within five years he published two more novels and a collection of short stories, and had his first play produced; but a success to match that of his first book eluded him. [5] He attempted to disinherit his daughter and to make Searle his adopted son, but the courts prevented it.[124]. Maugham's short story "The Verger" is a tale about a simple man Albert Edward Foreman. [116] He did the same on American television, introducing the Somerset Maugham Theater series, which a reviewer said enjoyed "tremendous popularity and has won for him an audience of millions of enthusiastic fans". [41] By the next year, while the run of Lady Frederick continued, Maugham had three other plays running simultaneously in London. [180] Titles were altered to avoid association with stage plays held to be sensational: Rain became Sadie Thompson and The Constant Wife became Charming Sinners. In The Summing Up (1938) and A Writers Notebook (1949) Maugham explains his philosophy of life as a resigned atheism and a certain skepticism about the extent of mans innate goodness and intelligence; it is this that gives his work its astringent cynicism. "[26], Maugham took rooms in Westminster, across the Thames from the hospital. He found his uncle and aunt well-meaning but remote by contrast with the loving warmth of his home in Paris; he became shy and developed a stammer that stayed with him all his life. Biography of William Somerset Maugham (excerpt) William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and theatre writer. Item Height: 234mm. [184] Since then BBC radio has broadcast numerous adaptations of his plays, novels and short stories ranging from one-off presentations to 12-part serialisations including six productions of The Circle and two adaptations apiece of The Razor's Edge, Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale. William Somerset Maugham is one of the best known English writers of the 20th century. [47] In 1913 he proposed to the actress Sue Jones, daughter of the playwright Henry Arthur Jones;[48] she declined his offer. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for the rest of the author's life. They are motivated by their passions or emotions and by their attempts to control their destinies, not by an ideology or set of ideals. She was married to the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, but the couple had formally separated in 1909, after which she had a succession of partners, including the retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge. [22] A family friend found Maugham a position in an accountant's office in London, which he endured for a month before resigning. [20] A modest legacy from his father enabled him to go to Heidelberg University to study. [73] He was a prolific writer: between 1902 and 1933 he had 32 plays staged, and between 1897 and 1962 he published 19 novels, nine volumes of short stories, and non-fiction books covering travel, reminiscences, essays and extracts from his notebooks. RAIN VIII. . His American publishers estimated that four and a half million copies of his books were bought in the US during his lifetime.[127]. Her Fortnite livestreams have helped her amass more than 800,000 followers. Peaches were not in season then. He was raised by his aunt and uncle, and bullied by children at school. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories. [176] Some of his stories were judged too improper for the cinema; Calder cites an adaptation of the historical novel Then and Now which the Hays Office rejected for thirty-seven separate reasons. The Maharshi was of average height for an Indian, of a dark honey colour with close-cropped white hair and a close-cropped white beard. Most viewed. Though he wore nothing but an exiguous loincloth he looked neat, very clean and almost dapper. Many portray the conflict of Europeans in alien surroundings that provoke strong emotions, and Maughams skill in handling plot, in the manner of Guy de Maupassant, is distinguished by economy and suspense. Download Pdf. He has been a verger in St. Peter's Neville Square Church, doing his duties with great enjoyment and dedication. Maugham believed that "it is the impressions of a man's first twenty years which form him", and at the age of 53 - and extracted from his turbulent marriage to Syrie Wellcome - he had chosen to look back at his boyhood on the Kentish coast and at his early adulthood as a medical student in London. Crowley took offence and wrote a critique of the novel in Vanity Fair, charging Maugham with "varied, shameless and extensive" plagiarism. [80] They then visited San Francisco and sailed to Honolulu and Australia before the final leg of their voyage, to Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, where they remained for six months. Today's crossword puzzle clue is a general knowledge one: W Somerset Maugham's 1915 novel; the subject of several films. On his eightieth birthday the Garrick Club gave a dinner in his honour: only Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope had been similarly honoured. First published in 1989, Mr Calder's attempt to encompass Maugham's life and work in one volume fits nicely between Ted Morgan's Maugham: A Biography (1980) and Jeffrey Meyers' Somerset Maugham: A Life (2004); as far as I know the only other detailed biography is the very recently (2009) published The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina . W. Somerset Maugham. W. Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. [114][n 11] After returning to Cap Ferrat he completed his last full-length work of fiction, the historical novel Catalina. Publisher: Franklin Classics. He had an amiability of disposition that enabled him in a very short time to make friends with people in ships, clubs, bar-rooms, and hotels, so that through him I was able to get into easy contact with an immense number of persons whom otherwise I should have known only from a distance. ENVOI William Somerset Maugham 25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. William Somerset Maugham was an English author and playwright. William Somerset Maugham, better known as W. Somerset Maugham, was born on January 25, 1874, Paris, France. [5] Nevertheless he had a wish to marry, which he later greatly regretted. [62] In his overt capacity as an author he wrote Caroline, a three-act comedy, which opened in February 1916 at the New Theatre, London, with Irene Vanbrugh in the title role.[64]. Item Weight: 717g. His first fiction was the critically praised naturalist novel of London slum life, Liza of Lambeth, which was published in 1897, when Maugham was 23 and completing his medical training at London's St Thomas's Hospital. [84] By 1925, Maugham, learning that his wife was spreading scandal about his private life and had taken lovers of her own, was reconsidering his future. [138] Raphael remarks about Maugham as a playwright, "His wit was sharp but rarely distressing; his plots abounded in amusing situations, his characters were usually drawn from the same class as his audiences and managed at once to satirize and delight their originals". William Somerset Maugham Theatre I THE door opened and Michael Gosselyn looked up. [117], Maugham made many subsequent visits to London, including one for his daughter's second marriage in July 1948, where, in Hastings's words, "with professional ease he acted the part of proud father, managed to be civil to Syrie, and made a creditable speech at the reception at Claridge's afterwards". [76], After the war Maugham had to choose between living in Britain or being with Haxton, because the latter was refused admission to the country. He successfully sued for divorce in 1916, citing Maugham as co-respondent. He found Mediterranean lands much to his liking, for what his biographer Frederic Raphael calls their "douceur de vivre missing under grim English skies". He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. Illustration by Edward Sorel. [171], Comic stories include "Jane" (1923), about a dowdy widow who reinvents herself as an outrageous and conspicuous society figure, to the consternation of her family;[172] "The Creative Impulse" (1926), in which a domineering authoress is shocked when her mild-mannered husband leaves her and sets up home with their cook;[172] and "The Three Fat Women of Antibes" (1933) in which three middle-aged friends play highly competitive bridge while attempting to slim, until reversals at the bridge table at the hands of an effortlessly slender fourth player provoke them into extravagantly breaking their diets. [88][n 9], In 1930 Maugham published the novel Cakes and Ale, regarded by Connon as the most likely of the author's works to survive. 27, 59, 143 and 295, Mander and Mitchenson, p. 15; and Richards, pp. William Somerset Maugham was one of the most popular writers of his time, and reputedly the highest paid author of the 1930s. [107] Maugham was happy for him and was reconciled to the possibility of returning to La Mauresque without him after the war. [183] On radio, the BBC's connection with Maugham goes back to 1930, when Hermione Gingold and Richard Goolden starred in an adaptation of "Before the Party" from his 1922 volume The Casuarina Tree. [191] Virginia Woolf was friendly though a little patronising;[192] Lytton Strachey disparaged one of his books as "Class II, Division I". [49] In 1914 he began an affair with Syrie Wellcome, whom he had known since 1910. [113], Before returning to the south of France after the war, Maugham travelled to England and lived in London until the end of 1946. Before Fame. [5] Maugham wrote his first book while in Heidelberg, a biography of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, but it was not accepted for publication and the author destroyed the manuscript. [148], Maugham published novels in every decade from the 1890s to the 1940s. The W. Somerset Maugham Collection features: The Moon And Sixpence Of Human Bondage [46] Lifelong, Maugham was highly reticent about homosexual encounters, but it was thought by at least two of his lovers that at this period in his life he had recourse to young male prostitutes. There are but two important critics in my own country who have troubled to take me seriously and when clever young men write essays about contemporary fiction they never think of considering me. [160], The stories range from the short sketches of On a Chinese Screen, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to many, mostly serious, short stories dealing with the lives of British and other colonial expatriates in the Pacific Islands and Asia. This is a social-psychological novel that reveals the problem of relations between men and women in bourgeois society, depicts the psychological portraits of characters, and describes their feelings, emotions and thoughts as well. [164], Among the short stories set in England, one of the best-known is "The Alien Corn" (1931), where a young man rediscovers his Jewish heritage and rejects his family's efforts to distance themselves from Judaism. She began posting to Twitch in June 2019. [149], Liza of Lambeth caused outrage in some quarters, not only because its heroine sleeps with a married man, but also for its graphic depiction of the deprivation and squalor of the London slums, of which most people from Maugham's social class preferred to remain ignorant. One recalls, too, the long list of movies that have been made from his novels . [ 28 ], as in his novels as Lady Frederick ( 1912 ) and the Circle ( )... January 1874 - 16 December 1965 ) was a British playwright, and! Alan Searle became Maugham 's secretary-companion for the rest of the best known English writers of his and... Maugham felt that despite his considerable wealth he should not live luxuriously while Britain was enduring privations... 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