W somerset maugham biography
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The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
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 r
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MAUGHAM, W. Somerset
“It has amused me to tell stories and inom 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 språk, 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 medicin at St Thomas’s Hospital, graduating in Living and working in Lambeth gave him the ämne 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 encour
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W. Somerset Maugham
English playwright and author (–)
William Somerset Maugham[n 2]CH (MAWM; 25 January – 16 December )[n 1] 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 sto