William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer.
By the time Maugham was three, his older brothers were all away at boarding school. Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth.
In 1897, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences.
Sutherland's portrait was included in the exhibition 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 at the National Portrait Gallery. ==Bibliography== ===Editions=== Burgess, Anthony (ed.) Maugham's Malaysian Stories (Hong Kong: Heinemann, 1969) [no ISBN].
This changed in 1907 with the success of his play Lady Frederick.
Based on the 1907 play Lady Frederick. East of Suez (1925), directed by Raoul Walsh.
Based on the 1908 novel of the same name. Sadie Thompson (1928), a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore.
Based on the 1913 play of the same name. Smith (1917), directed by Maurice Elvey.
Based on the 1913 play of the same name. The Divorcee (1919), directed by Herbert Blaché.
Based on the 1913 play The Land of Promise, this was a remake of the 1917 film of that name, with Thomas Meighan reprising his role as Frank Taylor. The Magician (1926).
Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation. ===Popular success, 1914–1939=== By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published.
In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland, as one of the network of British agents who operated against the Berlin Committee, whose members included Virendranath Chattopadhyay, an Indian revolutionary trying to resist colonial Britain's rule of India.
His first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service.
This was a collection of 58 ultra-short story sketches, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, intending to expand the sketches later as a book. ==Travels and writing== In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin.
He worked for the service in Switzerland and Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 in the Russian Empire.
Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent. In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married.
Maugham lived in Switzerland as a writer. In June 1917, Maugham was asked by Sir William Wiseman, an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia.
Based on the 1913 play The Land of Promise, this was a remake of the 1917 film of that name, with Thomas Meighan reprising his role as Frank Taylor. The Magician (1926).
Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator, who in the 1920s popularized "the all-white room".
This was a collection of 58 ultra-short story sketches, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, intending to expand the sketches later as a book. ==Travels and writing== In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin.
This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s that inspired his novels.
There he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 1930s.
Based on the 1921 play of the same name. The Canadian (1926), directed by William Beaudine.
In 1922, Maugham dedicated his book On A Chinese Screen to Syrie.
He had adapted it for the stage from a story published in 1924 in Hearst's International; it was reprinted in his collection The Casuarina Tree (1926). The play was adapted as a film by the same name in 1929.
In 1951, Katherine Cornell was a great success playing the lead in Maugham's comedy The Constant Wife. In 1926, Maugham bought the Villa La Mauresque, on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.
In 1938, he visited the Hindu sage Ramana Maharishi at his ashram in India, after whom he modeled the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel The Razor's Edge. Maugham's play The Letter, starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927.
Later, he asked that Katharine Cornell play the lead in the 1927 Broadway version.
He lived there until his death, with time away for frequent and long travels. In that period, Maugham began a relationship with Alan Searle, whom he had first met in 1928.
He had adapted it for the stage from a story published in 1924 in Hearst's International; it was reprinted in his collection The Casuarina Tree (1926). The play was adapted as a film by the same name in 1929.
He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and the orphaned boy was raised by a paternal uncle, who was emotionally cold.
This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s that inspired his novels.
There he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1934 the American journalist and radio personality Alexander Woollcott offered Maugham some language advice: "The female implies, and from that the male infers." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn." Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim.
His elder brother, Viscount Maugham, did become a lawyer, enjoying a distinguished legal career and serving as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939. Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), contracted tuberculosis, a condition for which her physician prescribed childbirth.
He wrote in 1938: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other." ==Marriage and family== Maugham entered into a relationship with Syrie Wellcome, the wife of Henry Wellcome, an American-born English pharmaceutical magnate.
In 1938, he visited the Hindu sage Ramana Maharishi at his ashram in India, after whom he modeled the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel The Razor's Edge. Maugham's play The Letter, starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927.
Based on the novella The Vessel of Wrath; not to be confused with the 1938 film. Julia, du bist zauberhaft (1962), starring Lilli Palmer and Charles Boyer.
Somerset, 1938; The Summing Up.
. Vidal, Gore, 1 February 1990; The New York Review of Books. Venkataramiah, Munagala, 15 October 1938, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi. ==External links== Caxton Club Biography (Archived October 26, 2014) The British Empire, Biographies, Authors W.
His elder brother, Viscount Maugham, did become a lawyer, enjoying a distinguished legal career and serving as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939. Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), contracted tuberculosis, a condition for which her physician prescribed childbirth.
A second film adaptation was released in 1940, starring American actress Bette Davis, who was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance.
By 1940, when the collapse of France and its occupation by the German Third Reich forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera, he was a refugee—but one of the wealthiest and most famous writers in the English-speaking world. Maugham's short fable An Appointment in Samarra (1933) is based on an ancient Babylonian myth: Death is both the narrator and a central character.
Cummings, and Ernest Hemingway. During this time he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan, who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944.
Maugham later lived in the French Riviera with his partner Gerald Haxton until Haxton's death in 1944.
In 1938, he visited the Hindu sage Ramana Maharishi at his ashram in India, after whom he modeled the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel The Razor's Edge. Maugham's play The Letter, starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927.
After his companion Gerald Haxton died in 1944, Maugham returned to England.
After the war, in 1946 Maugham returned to his villa in France.
It was adapted into a major motion picture, released in 1946, starring Tyrone Power as Larry Darrell, with Herbert Marshall as W. Somerset Maugham.
==Influence== In 1947 Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of 35 for a work of fiction published in the past year.
In 1948 he wrote Great Novelists and Their Novels (also known as Ten Novels and Their Authors and The Art of Fiction), in which he listed the ten best novels of world literature in his view. Maugham was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1954 Birthday Honours. Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War; he continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club.
In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre.
He is made up of a dozen people and the greater part of him is myself"—yet in an introduction written for the 1950 Modern Library edition of the work, he plainly states that Walpole was the inspiration for Kear (while denying that Thomas Hardy was the inspiration for the novelist Driffield).
In 1951, Katherine Cornell was a great success playing the lead in Maugham's comedy The Constant Wife. In 1926, Maugham bought the Villa La Mauresque, on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.
From 1951, about 14 years before his death, his paintings began their exhibition life.
In 1948 he wrote Great Novelists and Their Novels (also known as Ten Novels and Their Authors and The Art of Fiction), in which he listed the ten best novels of world literature in his view. Maugham was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1954 Birthday Honours. Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War; he continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club.
Hastings, Selina, 2009 "A blackstable boyhood" Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1955; The Artist and the Theatre.
In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel." In 1962 Maugham sold a collection of paintings, some of which had already been assigned by deed to his daughter Liza.
In his 1962 volume of memoirs Looking Back, he attacked the late Syrie Maugham and wrote that Liza had been born before they married.
Somerset, 1962; Looking Back.
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer.
He next lived with Alan Searle until his own death in 1965. ===Sexuality=== Maugham has been described both as bisexual and as homosexual.
Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the French courts, and it was overturned. But after Maugham's death, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of the Villa La Mauresque, Maugham's manuscripts, and his revenue from copyrights for 30 years.
. Nichols, Beverley 1966, A Case of Human Bondage Rogal, Samuel J., 1997; A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia.
Sutherland's portrait was included in the exhibition 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 at the National Portrait Gallery. ==Bibliography== ===Editions=== Burgess, Anthony (ed.) Maugham's Malaysian Stories (Hong Kong: Heinemann, 1969) [no ISBN].
Heinemann & the National Theatre Maugham, Robin, 1977; Somerset and all the Maughams.
Maugham, Robin, 1977; Search for Nirvana.
William Heinemann Ltd Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1980; Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings.
Morgan, Ted, 1980; Somerset Maugham Jonathan Cape.
Another film adaptation was issued in 1984, starring Bill Murray. Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Pacific Islands and Asia.
Morgan, Ted, 1984; Maugham Touchstone Books.
. Vidal, Gore, 1 February 1990; The New York Review of Books. Venkataramiah, Munagala, 15 October 1938, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi. ==External links== Caxton Club Biography (Archived October 26, 2014) The British Empire, Biographies, Authors W.
In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. ==Significant works== Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, a semi-autobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle.
. Nichols, Beverley 1966, A Case of Human Bondage Rogal, Samuel J., 1997; A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia.
Liza Maugham, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by her four children (a son and a daughter by her first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon).
Somerset Collected Stories (London: Everyman's Library, 2004) . ==Film adaptations== The Land of Promise (1917), directed by Joseph Kaufman and starring Thomas Meighan and David van Eyck.
As serialised in Show, June, July & August. Meyers, Jeffrey, 2004; Somerset Maugham: A life.
Based on the novel of the same name. ==See also== List of ambulance drivers during World War I ==References== ==Notes== == Sources == Hastings, Selina, 2009; The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham – A biography.
Hastings, Selina, 2009 "A blackstable boyhood" Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1955; The Artist and the Theatre.
Milton, Giles Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot, Sceptre, 2013.
. Vidal, Gore, 1 February 1990; The New York Review of Books. Venkataramiah, Munagala, 15 October 1938, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi. ==External links== Caxton Club Biography (Archived October 26, 2014) The British Empire, Biographies, Authors W.
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