W. Somerset Maugham
Encyclopedia
William Somerset Maugham , CH
(25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story
writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.
. It was taken for granted that Maugham and his brothers would follow in their footsteps. His elder brother Viscount Maugham
enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor
from 1938 to 1939.
Maugham's mother Edith Mary (née Snell) had tuberculosis
, a condition for which her doctor prescribed childbirth. She had Maugham several years after the last of his three older brothers; they were already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three. The youngest, he was effectively raised as an only child.
Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died of TB six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized; he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life. Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died of cancer.
Maugham was sent back to England to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable
, in Kent. The move was damaging, as Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel. The boy attended The King's School, Canterbury
, which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. Maugham developed a stammer
that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance.
Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year in Heidelberg
, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer
.
On his return to England, his uncle found Maugham a position in an accountant's office, but after a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle set about finding Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers, and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps. A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. His uncle rejected the civil service, not because of the young man's feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen; a recent law required applicants to pass an entry examination. The local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle agreed. Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently wished to become an author, but as he was not of age, he refrained from telling his guardian. For the next five years, he studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital
in Lambeth, London.
Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he presented his second book for consideration, Liza of Lambeth
, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a London slum. The novel is of the school of social-realist "slum writers" such as George Gissing
and Arthur Morrison
. Frank as it is, Maugham 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."
Liza of Lambeth proved popular with both reviewers and the public, and the first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. This convinced Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, to drop medicine and embark on his 65-year career as a man of letters. Of his entry into the profession of writing he later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."
The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and live in places such as Spain and Capri
for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed dramatically in 1907 with the phenomenal success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch
published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards. Maugham's supernatural thriller called
The Magician
(1907) based its principal character on the well-known and somewhat disreputable Aleister Crowley
. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. Feeling somewhat vilified, he wrote a scathing critique of the novel and charged Maugham with plagiarism. a review that was published in Vanity Fair
. Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.
's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos Passos
and E. E. Cummings
. During this time, he met Frederick Gerald Haxton
, a young San Franciscan
, who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944. Throughout this period Maugham continued to write. He proofread Of Human Bondage
at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties. Maugham also worked for British Intelligence in mainland Europe during the war, having been recruited by John Wallinger
; he was one of the network of British agents who operated in Switzerland against the Berlin Committee
, notably Virendranath Chattopadhyay. Maugham was later recruited by William Wiseman
to work in Russia.
Of Human Bondage
(1915) initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York World
described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential critic and novelist Theodore Dreiser
rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift and it has never been out of print since.
The book appeared to be closely autobiographical: Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitstable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Philip Carey is a doctor. Maugham insisted it was more invention than fact. The close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark, despite the legal requirement to state that "the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary". In 1938 he wrote: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."
Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men, he also had sexual relationships with a number of women. His affair with Syrie Wellcome
, daughter of the orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo
and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome
, produced a daughter named Liza
(born Mary Elizabeth Wellcome, 1915–1998). Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent. In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie and Maugham were married. Syrie became a noted interior decorator who in the 1920s popularized the all-white room.
Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties to promote Of Human Bondage. With that completed, he was eager to assist the war effort once more. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high-ranking intelligence officer known only as "R." In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland, secretly gathering and passing on intelligence while posing as himself — that is, as a writer.
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 those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material that Maugham steadily turned into fiction.
In June, 1917, he was asked by Sir William Wiseman, an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service
(later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia to keep the Provisional Government
in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda. Two and a half months later the Bolsheviks took control. The job was probably always impossible, but Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances.
Never losing the chance to turn real life into a story, Maugham made his spying experiences into a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy, Ashenden
, a volume that influenced the Ian Fleming
James Bond
series. In 1922, Maugham dedicated On A Chinese Screen, a book of 58 ultra-short story sketches collected during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to Syrie, with the intention of later turning the sketches into a book.
Dramatised from a story which first appeared in his collection The Casuarina Tree published in 1924, 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. The play was later adapted for film in 1929
and again in 1940
. Later, Cornell would play the lead in his comedy, The Constant Wife
in 1951, and was an enormous success.
Syrie and Maugham divorced in 1927–8 after a tempestuous marriage complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and strained by his relationship with Haxton.
In 1928, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque on 12 acres (48,562.3 m²) at Cap Ferrat
on the French Riviera
, which was his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, including plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera and become a well-heeled refugee, he was already one of the most famous and wealthiest writers in the English-speaking world.
Maugham's talent for the dramatic was demonstrated in his 1933 retelling of the ancient Babylonian myth An Appointment in Samarra
, where Death was both the narrator and a central character. Maugham's retelling was then credited by John O'Hara
as a creative inspiration for his own novel Appointment in Samarra
.
The gap left by Haxton's death in 1944 was filled by Alan Searle. Maugham had first met Searle in 1928. Searle was a young man from the London slum area of Bermondsey
and he had already been kept by older men. He proved a devoted if not a stimulating companion. Indeed one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Haxton and Searle, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was vin ordinaire."
Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed... In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel."
In 1962 he sold a collection of paintings, some of which had been assigned to his daughter Liza
by deed. She sued her father and won a judgment of £230,000. Maugham responded by publicly disowning her and claiming she was not his biological daughter; adopting Searle as his son and heir; and launching a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie in his 1962 volume of memoirs, Looking Back, in which Liza discovered she had been born before her parents' marriage. The memoirs lost him several friends and exposed him to much public ridicule. Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the French courts, and it was overturned. Nevertheless, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of Villa Mauresque, and Maugham's manuscripts and copyrights for 30 years. Thereafter the copyrights passed to the Royal Literary Fund
.
There is no grave for Maugham. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King's School, Canterbury
. Liza, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by Somerset Maugham's four grandchildren (a son and a daughter by Liza's first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon). One of the next generation is the autistic savant and musical prodigy Derek Paravicini
.
offered to Maugham this bit of language advice: "The female implies, and from that the male infers." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn."
Maugham wrote in 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. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way".
For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered indefensible as well as illegal) or whether he merely took a stance to cover himself, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist. In "Don Fernando", a non-fiction volume about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful) suggestion that the painter El Greco
was homosexual: "It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him. Some at least of the broad and typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole ... I cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this".
But Maugham's homosexual leanings did shape his fiction in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for authors of his time. Liza of Lambeth, Cakes and Ale
, Neil MacAdam and The Razor's Edge
all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result. Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he travelled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."
Maugham's public view of his abilities remained modest. Towards the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.
Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and 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, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, his paintings began their exhibition life. In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.
, a semiautobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned, and brought up by his pious uncle. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality. His later novels were based on historical people: The Moon and Sixpence
fictionalizes the life of Paul Gauguin
; and Cakes and Ale
contains thinly veiled characterizations of the authors Thomas Hardy
and Hugh Walpole
. Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge
, published in 1944, was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of World War I who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, traveling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck a chord with readers as World War II waned. It was quickly adapted as a movie.
Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. They typically express the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Some of his most outstanding works in this genre include "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation". "Rain", in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson
, has kept its status. It has been adapted as a play and as several films. Maugham said that many of his short stories were inspired by accounts he heard during his travels in the outposts of the Empire. He left behind a long string of angry former hosts. Jane Lane (pen name of Elaine Kidner Dakers), a contemporary anti-Maugham writer, retraced his footsteps and wrote a record of his journeys called Gin And Bitters. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the tensions and passions without appearing melodramatic. His The Magician
(1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley
.
Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh
and Freya Stark
. His best efforts in this line include The Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On a Chinese Screen, a series of very brief vignettes which might almost be notes for short stories that were never written.
Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard
, which Maugham had often enjoyed for their conscientiousness, wisdom and wit, Maugham published selections from his own journals under the title A Writer's Notebook in 1949. Although these journal selections are, by nature, episodic and of varying quality, they range over more than 50 years of the writer's life and contain much that Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest.
, awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five for a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable winners include V. S. Naipaul
, Kingsley Amis
, Martin Amis
and Thom Gunn
. On his death, Maugham donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund
.
Other writers acknowledged his work. Anthony Burgess
, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers
, praised his influence. George Orwell
said that Maugham was "the modern writer who has influenced me the most."
in the Tate Gallery
, and several by Sir Gerald Kelly
. Sutherland's portrait was included in the exhibit Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 at the National Portrait Gallery.
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
(25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.
Childhood and education
Maugham's father Robert Ormond Maugham was an English lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris, France. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil. His grandfather, another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the English Law SocietyLaw Society of England and Wales
The Law Society is the professional association that represents the solicitors' profession in England and Wales. It provides services and support to practising and training solicitors as well as serving as a sounding board for law reform. Members of the Society are often consulted when important...
. It was taken for granted that Maugham and his brothers would follow in their footsteps. His elder brother Viscount Maugham
Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham
Frederic Herbert Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham PC, KC was a British lawyer and judge who served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 until 1939 despite having virtually no political career at all....
enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor
Lord Chancellor
The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor, is a senior and important functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. He is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking only after the Lord High Steward. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Sovereign...
from 1938 to 1939.
Maugham's mother Edith Mary (née Snell) had tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, a condition for which her doctor prescribed childbirth. She had Maugham several years after the last of his three older brothers; they were already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three. The youngest, he was effectively raised as an only child.
Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died of TB six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized; he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life. Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died of cancer.
Maugham was sent back to England to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable
Whitstable
Whitstable is a seaside town in Northeast Kent, Southeast England. It is approximately north of the city of Canterbury and approximately west of the seaside town of Herne Bay. It is part of the City of Canterbury district and has a population of about 30,000.Whitstable is famous for its oysters,...
, in Kent. The move was damaging, as Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel. The boy attended The King's School, Canterbury
The King's School, Canterbury
The King's School is a British co-educational independent school for both day and boarding pupils in the historic English cathedral city of Canterbury in Kent. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group....
, which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. Maugham developed a stammer
Stuttering
Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance.
Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
.
On his return to England, his uncle found Maugham a position in an accountant's office, but after a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle set about finding Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers, and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps. A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. His uncle rejected the civil service, not because of the young man's feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen; a recent law required applicants to pass an entry examination. The local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle agreed. Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently wished to become an author, but as he was not of age, he refrained from telling his guardian. For the next five years, he studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...
in Lambeth, London.
Early works
Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham felt the contrary. He was living in the great city of London, meeting people of a "low" sort whom he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he presented his second book for consideration, Liza of Lambeth
Liza of Lambeth
Liza of Lambeth was W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, which he wrote while working as a doctor at a hospital in Lambeth, then a working class district of London. It depicts the short life and death of Liza Kemp, an 18-year-old factory worker who lives together with her aging mother in Vere Street...
, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a London slum. The novel is of the school of social-realist "slum writers" such as George Gissing
George Gissing
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.-Early life:...
and Arthur Morrison
Arthur Morrison
Arthur George Morrison was an English author and journalist known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories....
. Frank as it is, Maugham 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."
Liza of Lambeth proved popular with both reviewers and the public, and the first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. This convinced Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, to drop medicine and embark on his 65-year career as a man of letters. Of his entry into the profession of writing he later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."
The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and live in places such as Spain and Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed dramatically in 1907 with the phenomenal success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards. Maugham's supernatural thriller called
The Magician
The Magician (Maugham novel)
The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life...
(1907) based its principal character on the well-known and somewhat disreputable Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. Feeling somewhat vilified, he wrote a scathing critique of the novel and charged Maugham with plagiarism. a review that was published in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (British magazine)
The second Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine published from 1868 to 1914.-History:Subtitled "A Weekly Show of Political, Social and Literary Wares", it was founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles, who aimed to expose the contemporary vanities of Victorian society. The first issue appeared in London...
. Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.
Popular success, 1914–39
By 1914 Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when World War I broke out, Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red CrossBritish Red Cross
The British Red Cross Society is the United Kingdom branch of the worldwide impartial humanitarian organisation the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The society was formed in 1870, and is a registered charity with over 31,000 volunteers and 2,600 staff. At the heart of their work...
's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
and E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
. During this time, he met Frederick Gerald Haxton
Gerald Haxton
Frederick Gerald Haxton , a native of San Francisco, was the long term secretary and lover of the famous novelist and playwright W...
, a young San Franciscan
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944. Throughout this period Maugham continued to write. He proofread Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties. Maugham also worked for British Intelligence in mainland Europe during the war, having been recruited by John Wallinger
John Wallinger
Sir John Arnold-Wallinger was a British Indian intelligence officer who led the prototype Indian Political Intelligence Office from 1909 to 1916. He was also the literary prototype of the spymaster of a number of Somerset Maugham's short stories...
; he was one of the network of British agents who operated in Switzerland against the Berlin Committee
Berlin Committee
The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in the country. The purpose of the Committee was to promote the cause of Indian Independence...
, notably Virendranath Chattopadhyay. Maugham was later recruited by William Wiseman
Sir William Wiseman, 10th Baronet
Sir William George Eden Wiseman, 10th Baronet was a British intelligence agent and banker. He was a general partner at American investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. from 1929 till 1960.- Biography :...
to work in Russia.
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
(1915) initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential critic and novelist Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift and it has never been out of print since.
The book appeared to be closely autobiographical: Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitstable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Philip Carey is a doctor. Maugham insisted it was more invention than fact. The close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark, despite the legal requirement to state that "the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary". In 1938 he wrote: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."
Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men, he also had sexual relationships with a number of women. His affair with Syrie Wellcome
Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo
Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best-known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white.-Birth:...
, daughter of the orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo
Thomas John Barnardo
Thomas John Barnardo was a philanthropist and founder and director of homes for poor children, born in Dublin. From the foundation of the first Barnardo's home in 1870 to the date of Barnardo’s death, nearly 100,000 children had been rescued, trained and given a better life.- Early life :Barnardo...
and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome
Henry Wellcome
Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome FRS was an American-British pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He founded the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Company with his colleague Silas Burroughs, which is one of the four large companies that merged to form GlaxoSmithKline...
, produced a daughter named Liza
Mary Elizabeth Maugham
Mary Elizabeth Maugham Paravicini Hope, Baroness Glendevon was the only child of English playwright, novelist, and short story writer W. Somerset Maugham and his then mistress, Syrie Wellcome...
(born Mary Elizabeth Wellcome, 1915–1998). Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent. In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie and Maugham were married. Syrie became a noted interior decorator who in the 1920s popularized the all-white room.
Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties to promote Of Human Bondage. With that completed, he was eager to assist the war effort once more. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high-ranking intelligence officer known only as "R." In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland, secretly gathering and passing on intelligence while posing as himself — that is, as a writer.
In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence
The Moon and Sixpence
The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire...
, based on the life of Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
. This was the first of those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material that Maugham steadily turned into fiction.
In June, 1917, he was asked by Sir William Wiseman, an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia to keep the Provisional Government
Russian Provisional Government
The Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II . On September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire was officially dissolved by the newly created Directorate, and the country was...
in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda. Two and a half months later the Bolsheviks took control. The job was probably always impossible, but Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances.
Never losing the chance to turn real life into a story, Maugham made his spying experiences into a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy, Ashenden
Ashenden: Or the British Agent
Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1928 collection of loosely linked stories by W. Somerset Maugham. It is partly based on the author's experience as a member of British Intelligence in Europe during the First World War.-Plot summary:...
, a volume that influenced the Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
series. In 1922, Maugham dedicated On A Chinese Screen, a book of 58 ultra-short story sketches collected during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to Syrie, with the intention of later turning the sketches into a book.
Dramatised from a story which first appeared in his collection The Casuarina Tree published in 1924, Maugham's play The Letter
The Letter (play)
The Letter is a play by W. Somerset Maugham dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story is based on a real-life scandal involving the wife of the headmaster of a school in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting...
, starring Gladys Cooper
Gladys Cooper
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....
, had its premiere in London in 1927. Later, he asked that Katharine Cornell
Katharine Cornell
Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.Cornell is known as the greatest American stage actress of the 20th century...
play the lead in the 1927 Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
version. The play was later adapted for film in 1929
The Letter (1929 film)
The Letter is an American drama film which was made in both silent and talking versions by Paramount Pictures.-Preservation status:...
and again in 1940
The Letter (1940 film)
The Letter is a 1940 American film noir directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, originally filmed in 1929.-Plot:...
. Later, Cornell would play the lead in his comedy, The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife, a comedy of manners, was written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1926 and later published for general sales in April 1927.- Plot :...
in 1951, and was an enormous success.
Syrie and Maugham divorced in 1927–8 after a tempestuous marriage complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and strained by his relationship with Haxton.
In 1928, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque on 12 acres (48,562.3 m²) at Cap Ferrat
Cap Ferrat
Cap Ferrat is situated in Alpes-Maritimes département, in southeastern France. It is located in the commune of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.Saint Hospitius lived here as a recluse during the sixth century...
on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
, which was his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, including plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera and become a well-heeled refugee, he was already one of the most famous and wealthiest writers in the English-speaking world.
Maugham's talent for the dramatic was demonstrated in his 1933 retelling of the ancient Babylonian myth An Appointment in Samarra
Samarra
Sāmarrā is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700....
, where Death was both the narrator and a central character. Maugham's retelling was then credited by John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
as a creative inspiration for his own novel Appointment in Samarra
Appointment in Samarra
Appointment in Samarra, published in 1934, is the first novel by John O'Hara. It concerns the self-destruction of Julian English, once a member of the social elite of Gibbsville ....
.
Grand old man of letters
Maugham, by now in his sixties, spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations) and later in the South. While in the US he was asked by the British government to make patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. Gerald Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham moved back to England, then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived, interrupted by frequent and long travels, until his death.The gap left by Haxton's death in 1944 was filled by Alan Searle. Maugham had first met Searle in 1928. Searle was a young man from the London slum area of Bermondsey
Bermondsey
Bermondsey is an area in London on the south bank of the river Thames, and is part of the London Borough of Southwark. To the west lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe, and to the south, Walworth and Peckham.-Toponomy:...
and he had already been kept by older men. He proved a devoted if not a stimulating companion. Indeed one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Haxton and Searle, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was vin ordinaire."
Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed... In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel."
In 1962 he sold a collection of paintings, some of which had been assigned to his daughter Liza
Mary Elizabeth Maugham
Mary Elizabeth Maugham Paravicini Hope, Baroness Glendevon was the only child of English playwright, novelist, and short story writer W. Somerset Maugham and his then mistress, Syrie Wellcome...
by deed. She sued her father and won a judgment of £230,000. Maugham responded by publicly disowning her and claiming she was not his biological daughter; adopting Searle as his son and heir; and launching a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie in his 1962 volume of memoirs, Looking Back, in which Liza discovered she had been born before her parents' marriage. The memoirs lost him several friends and exposed him to much public ridicule. Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the French courts, and it was overturned. Nevertheless, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of Villa Mauresque, and Maugham's manuscripts and copyrights for 30 years. Thereafter the copyrights passed to the Royal Literary Fund
Royal Literary Fund
The Royal Literary Fund is a benevolent fund set up to help published British writers in financial difficulties. It was founded by Reverend David Williams in 1790 and has received bequests and donations, including royal patronage, ever since...
.
There is no grave for Maugham. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King's School, Canterbury
The King's School, Canterbury
The King's School is a British co-educational independent school for both day and boarding pupils in the historic English cathedral city of Canterbury in Kent. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group....
. Liza, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by Somerset Maugham's four grandchildren (a son and a daughter by Liza's first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon). One of the next generation is the autistic savant and musical prodigy Derek Paravicini
Derek Paravicini
Derek Paravicini is a blind English autistic savant and a musical prodigy. He lives in Surrey.-Biography:Paravicini was born extremely prematurely, at 25 weeks . His blindness was caused by oxygen therapy given during his time in a neonatal intensive care unit...
.
Achievements
Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. In 1934 the American journalist and radio personality Alexander WoollcottAlexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
offered to Maugham this bit of language advice: "The female implies, and from that the male infers." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn."
Maugham wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way".
For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered indefensible as well as illegal) or whether he merely took a stance to cover himself, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist. In "Don Fernando", a non-fiction volume about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful) suggestion that the painter El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
was homosexual: "It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him. Some at least of the broad and typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole ... I cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this".
But Maugham's homosexual leanings did shape his fiction in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for authors of his time. Liza of Lambeth, Cakes and Ale
Cakes and Ale
Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard is a novel by British author William Somerset Maugham. It is often alleged to be a thinly veiled roman à clef examining contemporary novelists Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole — though Maugham maintained he had created both characters as composites...
, Neil MacAdam and The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge
The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result. Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he travelled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."
Maugham's public view of his abilities remained modest. Towards the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.
Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...
. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, his paintings began their exhibition life. 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 BondageOf Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
, a semiautobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned, and brought up by his pious uncle. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality. His later novels were based on historical people: The Moon and Sixpence
The Moon and Sixpence
The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire...
fictionalizes the life of Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
; and Cakes and Ale
Cakes and Ale
Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard is a novel by British author William Somerset Maugham. It is often alleged to be a thinly veiled roman à clef examining contemporary novelists Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole — though Maugham maintained he had created both characters as composites...
contains thinly veiled characterizations of the authors Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
and Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...
. Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge
The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
, published in 1944, was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of World War I who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, traveling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck a chord with readers as World War II waned. It was quickly adapted as a movie.
Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. They typically express the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Some of his most outstanding works in this genre include "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation". "Rain", in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson
Sadie Thompson
Sadie Thompson is an American silent film that tells the story of a "fallen woman" who comes to Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila to start a new life, but encounters a zealous missionary who wants to force her back to her former life in San Francisco. The film stars Gloria Swanson, Lionel...
, has kept its status. It has been adapted as a play and as several films. Maugham said that many of his short stories were inspired by accounts he heard during his travels in the outposts of the Empire. He left behind a long string of angry former hosts. Jane Lane (pen name of Elaine Kidner Dakers), a contemporary anti-Maugham writer, retraced his footsteps and wrote a record of his journeys called Gin And Bitters. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the tensions and passions without appearing melodramatic. His The Magician
The Magician (Maugham novel)
The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life...
(1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
.
Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
and Freya Stark
Freya Stark
Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs. Perowne, DBE was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels, which were mainly in Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan....
. His best efforts in this line include The Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On a Chinese Screen, a series of very brief vignettes which might almost be notes for short stories that were never written.
Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard
Jules Renard
Pierre-Jules Renard or Jules Renard was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works Poil de carotte and Les Histoires Naturelles...
, which Maugham had often enjoyed for their conscientiousness, wisdom and wit, Maugham published selections from his own journals under the title A Writer's Notebook in 1949. Although these journal selections are, by nature, episodic and of varying quality, they range over more than 50 years of the writer's life and contain much that Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest.
Influence
In 1947, Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham AwardSomerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
, awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five for a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable winners include V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
, Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
, Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
and Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...
. On his death, Maugham donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund
Royal Literary Fund
The Royal Literary Fund is a benevolent fund set up to help published British writers in financial difficulties. It was founded by Reverend David Williams in 1790 and has received bequests and donations, including royal patronage, ever since...
.
Other writers acknowledged his work. Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers
Earthly Powers
Earthly Powers is a panoramic saga of the 20th century by Anthony Burgess first published in 1980. On one level it is a parody of a "blockbuster" novel, with the 81-year-old hero, Kenneth Toomey , telling the story of his life in 82 chapters...
, praised his influence. George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
said that Maugham was "the modern writer who has influenced me the most."
Portraits of Maugham
Many portraits were painted of Somerset Maugham, including that by Graham SutherlandGraham Sutherland
Graham Vivien Sutherland OM was an English artist.-Early life:He was born in Streatham, attending Homefield Preparatory School, Sutton. He was then educated at Epsom College, Surrey before going up to Goldsmiths, University of London...
in the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, and several by Sir Gerald Kelly
Gerald Festus Kelly
Sir Gerald Festus Kelly P.R.A. was a British painter best known for his portraits.-Life and work:Gerald Kelly was born in London, educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and later lived and studied art in Paris. James McNeill Whistler was an early influence...
. Sutherland's portrait was included in the exhibit Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 at the National Portrait Gallery.
Film adaptations
- The Land of Promise (1917) directed by Joseph Kaufman and starring Thomas MeighanThomas MeighanThomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....
. Based on the 1913 play of the same name. - SmithSmith (1917 film)Smith is a 1917 British silent romance film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Elisabeth Risdon, Fred Groves and Manora Thew. It was based on the 1913 play Smith by Somerset Maugham.-Cast:* Elisabeth Risdon - Smith* Fred Groves - Tom Freeman...
(1917) directed by Maurice ElveyMaurice ElveyMaurice Elvey was the most prolific film director in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year....
, based on the 1913 play of the same name. - The CircleThe Circle (1925 film)The Circle is a 1925 film directed by Frank Borzage. The film stars Eleanor Boardman, Malcolm McGregor, Alec B. Francis and Joan Crawford on an early role. It is written by Kenneth B. Clarke based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham. The 1921 Broadway play had starred John Drew, Jr. and Mrs. Leslie...
(1925) Directed by Frank BorzageFrank BorzageFrank Borzage was an American film director and actor.-Biography:Frank Borzage's father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone, in 1859. As a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg , where she worked in a silk factory...
, based on the 1921 play of the same name. - The Canadian (1926) directed by William BeaudineWilliam BeaudineWilliam Beaudine was an American film actor and director. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, turning out films in remarkable numbers and in a wide variety of genres.-Early life and career:...
. Based on the 1913 play, "The Land of Promise," this was a remake of the 1917 film of that name, with Thomas MeighanThomas MeighanThomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....
reprising his role as protagonist Frank Taylor. - The MagicianThe Magician (1926 film)The Magician is a 1926 horror film directed by Rex Ingram about a magician's efforts to acquire the blood of a virgin for his experiments to create life.It was adapted by Ingram from the novel The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham...
(1926) Based on the 1908 novel of the same name. - Sadie ThompsonSadie ThompsonSadie Thompson is an American silent film that tells the story of a "fallen woman" who comes to Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila to start a new life, but encounters a zealous missionary who wants to force her back to her former life in San Francisco. The film stars Gloria Swanson, Lionel...
(1928), a silent movie starring Gloria SwansonGloria SwansonGloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
and Lionel BarrymoreLionel BarrymoreLionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
. Based on the short story "Miss Thompson", which was later retitled "Rain". - The LetterThe Letter (1929 film)The Letter is an American drama film which was made in both silent and talking versions by Paramount Pictures.-Preservation status:...
(1929) featuring Jeanne EagelsJeanne EagelsJeanne Eagels was an American actress on Broadway and in several motion pictures. She was a former Ziegfeld Follies Girl who went on to greater fame on Broadway and in the emerging medium of sound films....
, O. P. Heggie, Reginald OwenReginald OwenJohn Reginald Owen was a British character actor. He was known for his many roles in British and American movies and later in television programs.-Personal:...
and Herbert MarshallHerbert MarshallHerbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
. Based on the play of the same name. - RainRain (1932 film)Rain is a 1932 South Seas drama film directed by Lewis Milestone with portions filmed at Santa Catalina Island, California. The film stars Joan Crawford as prostitute Sadie Thompson and Walter Huston as a conflicted missionary who wants to reform Sadie, but whose own morals start decaying...
(1932), the first sound version of the short story "Miss Thompson" (retitled as "Rain"), with Joan CrawfordJoan CrawfordJoan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
and Walter HustonWalter HustonWalter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
. - Of Human Bondage (1934) starring Leslie HowardLeslie Howard (actor)Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
and Bette DavisBette DavisRuth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
. Based on the book of the same name. - The Painted VeilThe Painted Veil (1934 film)The Painted Veil is a 1934 drama film made by MGM. It was directed by Ryszard Bolesławski and produced by Hunt Stromberg from a screenplay by John Meehan, Salka Viertel, and Edith Fitzgerald, adapted from the 1925 W. Somerset Maugham novel The Painted Veil. The music score was by Herbert Stothart,...
(1934) featuring Greta GarboGreta GarboGreta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
and Herbert MarshallHerbert MarshallHerbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
. Based on the novel of the same name. - Secret Agent (1936) with John GielgudJohn GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, Peter LorrePeter LorrePeter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
, Madeleine CarrollMadeleine CarrollEdith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...
, and Robert YoungRobert Young (actor)Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...
, directed by Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
. Based on Ashenden. - The Vessel of WrathThe Vessel of Wrath"The Vessel of Wrath" is a short story by W. Somerset Maugham. Written in 1931 it first appeared in the April 1931 edition of Hearst's International Cosmopolitan . Maugham often introduced short stories as a contribution to periodicals and then later included them in books or collected editions...
(1938) starring Charles LaughtonCharles LaughtonCharles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
; released in the USA as The Beachcomber. Based on the novella of the same name. - The LetterThe Letter (1940 film)The Letter is a 1940 American film noir directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, originally filmed in 1929.-Plot:...
(1940) featuring Bette DavisBette DavisRuth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
, Herbert MarshallHerbert MarshallHerbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
, James StephensonJames StephensonJames Stephenson was a British actor.-Career:British stage actor James Stephenson made his film debut in 1937 at the age of 48 with parts in four films...
, Frieda InescortFrieda InescortFrieda Inescort was a Scottish-born actress best known for creating the role of Sorel Bliss in Noel Coward's play Hay Fever....
and Gale SondergaardGale SondergaardGale Sondergaard was an American actress.Sondergaard began her acting career in theatre, and progressed to films in 1936. She was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her film debut in Anthony Adverse...
. Based on the play of the same name. - Too Many HusbandsToo Many HusbandsToo Many Husbands is a 1940 romantic comedy film about a woman who loses her husband in a boating accident and remarries, only to have her first spouse reappear. The film stars Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas, and is based on the 1919 play "Home and Beauty" by W. Somerset Maugham...
(1940) featuring Jean ArthurJean ArthurJean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
, Fred MacMurrayFred MacMurrayFrederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....
, and Melvyn DouglasMelvyn DouglasMelvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...
. Based on the play "Home and Beauty". - The Moon and SixpenceThe Moon and SixpenceThe Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire...
(1942) with George SandersGeorge SandersGeorge Sanders was a British actor.George Sanders may also refer to:*George Sanders , Victoria Cross recipient in World War I...
. Based on the novella of the same nameThe Moon and SixpenceThe Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire...
. - Christmas HolidayChristmas HolidayChristmas Holiday is a 1944 American drama film directed by Robert Siodmak. The black-and-white film noir is loosely based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Producer Felix Jackson chose this project as a dramatic vehicle for Deanna Durbin. The screenplay was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who...
(1944) starring Deanna DurbinDeanna DurbinDeanna Durbin is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....
and Gene KellyGene KellyEugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, based on the novel of the same name. - The Hour Before the DawnThe Hour Before the DawnThe Hour Before the Dawn is a 1944 drama film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake and Franchot Tone. It was based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham.-Plot:...
(1944) starring Veronica LakeVeronica LakeVeronica Lake was an American film actress and pin-up model. She received both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her role in Sullivan's Travels and her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s, and was well-known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle...
, based on the novel of the same name. - Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. is a 1946 race film directed by Spencer Williams and produced by Sack Amusement Enterprises.-Plot:Gertie LaRue is a nightclub entertainer from the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. She arrives on the Caribbean island of "Rinidad" to perform as the headliner in...
(1946). Unauthorized film version of "Miss Thompson" with an all-black cast, directed by Spencer WilliamsSpencer Williams (actor)Spencer Williams was an African American actor and filmmaker. He was best known for playing Andy in the Amos 'n Andy television show and for the directing the 1941 race film The Blood of Jesus. Williams was a pioneer African-American film producer and director.-Early career:Williams...
. - The Razor's EdgeThe Razor's Edge (1946 film)The Razor's Edge is the first film version of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel. It was released in 1946 and stars Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall, supporting cast Lucile Watson, Frank Latimore and Elsa Lanchester. Marshall plays Somerset Maugham....
(1946) featuring Tyrone PowerTyrone PowerTyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
and Gene TierneyGene TierneyGene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...
. Based on the book of the same name. - Of Human BondageOf Human Bondage (1946 film)Of Human Bondage is a 1946 American drama filmdirected by Edmund Goulding. The second screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 novel, the Warner Bros. release was written by Catherine Turney...
(1946) version starring Eleanor ParkerEleanor ParkerEleanor Jean Parker is an American screen actress. Her versatility led to her being dubbed Woman of a Thousand Faces, the title of her biography by Doug McClelland.- Early life :...
. - Quartet (1948) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Based on four of his short stories.
- Trio (1950) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Another collection based on short stories.
- EncoreEncore (1951 film)Encore is a 1951 anthology film composed of adaptations of three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham:*"The Ant and the Grasshopper", directed by Pat Jackson and adapted by T. E. B...
(1951) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. A third collection of Maugham short stories. - Miss Sadie ThompsonMiss Sadie ThompsonMiss Sadie Thompson is 1953 American musical 3D film starring Rita Hayworth, Aldo Ray, José Ferrer, and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is based on the W. Somerset Maugham short story Miss Thompson...
(1953), a semi-musicalMusical filmThe musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
version in 3-D, featuring Rita HayworthRita HayworthRita Hayworth was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars...
and José FerrerJosé FerrerJosé Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...
. - The Seventh SinThe Seventh SinThe Seventh Sin is a 1957 film based on the 1925 novel The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham.It was adapted for the screen by Karl Tunberg and directed by Ronald Neame...
(1957) with Eleanor ParkerEleanor ParkerEleanor Jean Parker is an American screen actress. Her versatility led to her being dubbed Woman of a Thousand Faces, the title of her biography by Doug McClelland.- Early life :...
. Based on the novel The Painted Veil. - The BeachcomberThe Beachcomber (film)The Beachcomber is a 1954 British comedy-drama film directed by Muriel Box starring Donald Sinden, Glynis Johns, Robert Newton, Paul Rogers, Donald Pleasence and Michael Hordern. The film is based on the story The Vessel of Wrath by W. Somerset Maugham and was adapted by Sydney Box. It was the...
(1958). Based on the novella The Vessel of Wrath; not to be confused with the 1938 film. - Du bist zauberhaftAdorable JuliaAdorable Julia is a 1962 German comedy film directed by Alfred Weidenmann. It was entered into the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Lilli Palmer - Julia Lambert* Charles Boyer - Michael Grosselyn* Jean Sorel - Tom Fennel...
(1962) starring Lilli PalmerLilli PalmerLilli Palmer , born Lilli Marie Peiser, was a German actress. She won the Volpi Cup, the Deutscher Filmpreis three times, and was nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award.-Life and career:...
and Charles BoyerCharles BoyerCharles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
. Based on the novel Theatre. - Of Human BondageOf Human Bondage (1964 film)Of Human Bondage is a 1964 British drama film directed by Ken Hughes. The MGM release, the third screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 novel, was written by Bryan Forbes.-Synopsis:...
(1964) with Laurence HarveyLaurence HarveyLaurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...
and Kim NovakKim NovakKim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
. - The Letter (1969) starring Eileen AtkinsEileen AtkinsDame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...
. Based on play of the same name. (made for television) - The Theatre (1978) starring Vija ArtmaneVija ArtmaneAlīda "Vija" Artmane was a Latvian / Soviet theatre and cinema actress.-Childhood:...
. Based on the play of the same name. - The Letter (1982) featuring Lee RemickLee RemickLee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...
, Jack ThompsonJack Thompson (actor)Jack Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society...
and Ronald PickupRonald Pickup-Life and career:Pickup was born in Chester, England, the son of Daisy and Eric Pickup, who was a lecturer. Pickup was educated at The King's School, Chester, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and became an Associate Member of RADA.His television work began with an episode...
. Based on play of the same name. (Made for television) - The Razor's EdgeThe Razor's Edge (1984 film)The Razor's Edge is the second film version of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel. The film was released in 1984 and stars Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliott and James Keach...
(1984) with Bill MurrayBill MurrayWilliam James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
. Based on the novel by the same name. - Up at the VillaUp at the VillaUp at the Villa is a 1941 novella by William Somerset Maugham about a young widow caught between three men: her suitor, her one-night stand, and her confidant. A fast-paced story, Up at the Villa incorporates elements of the crime and suspense novel....
(2000) starring Kristin Scott ThomasKristin Scott ThomasKristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....
and Sean PennSean PennSean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
, directed by Philip Haas. Based on the novella of the same name. - Being JuliaBeing JuliaBeing Julia is a 2004 drama film with comic undertones directed by István Szabó and starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons. The screenplay by Ronald Harwood is based on the 1937 novel Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham...
(2004) featuring Annette BeningAnnette BeningAnnette Carol Bening is an American actress. Bening is a four-time Oscar nominee for her roles in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right, winning Golden Globe Awards for the latter two films...
. Based on the novel Theatre. - The Painted VeilThe Painted Veil (2006 film)The Painted Veil is a 2006 Chinese-American drama film directed by John Curran. The screenplay by Ron Nyswaner is based on the 1925 novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham...
(2006) with Naomi WattsNaomi WattsNaomi Ellen Watts is a British actress. Watts began her career in Australian television, where she appeared in series such as Hey Dad..! , Brides of Christ , and Home and Away . Her film debut was the 1986 drama For Love Alone...
and Edward NortonEdward NortonEdward Harrison Norton is an American actor, screenwriter, film director and producer. In 1996, his supporting role in the courtroom drama Primal Fear garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor...
. Based on the novel of the same name.
Sources
- Hastings, Selina, 2009 The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - A biography. London, John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-6554-0
- Hastings, Selina, 2009 "A blackstable boyhood"
- Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1955 The Artist and the Theatre. William Heinemann Ltd
- Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1980 Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings. Heinemann & the National Theatre
- Maugham, Robin, 1970, Escape from the Shadows. Wiedenfeld and Nicholson Publishers.
- Maugham, Robin, 1977, Somerset and all the Maughams. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-8371-8236-0
- Maugham, Robin, 1977, Search for Nirvana. W.H. Allen.
- Maugham, W. Somerset, 1938, The Summing Up. Garden City Publishing Company.
- Maugham, W. Somerset, 1962, Looking Back. As serialised in Show, June, July & August.
- Meyers, Jeffrey, 2004, Somerset Maugham: A life. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41475-6
- Morgan, Ted, 1980, Somerset Maugham Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-01813-2
- Morgan, Ted, 1984, Maugham Touchstone Books. ISBN 0-671-50581-5.
- Vidal, Gore, 1 February 1990, The New York Review of Books...
External links
- The British Library
- Caxton Club Biography
- The British Empire, Biographies, Authors
- Works by W. Somerset Maugham at LibriVoxLibriVoxLibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
(audiobooks) - W. Somerset Maugham at Internet Off-Broadway Database
- National Theatre, Maugham's Theatrical Collection
- National Theatre, Shakespearean Characters
- Maugham's The Razor's Edge
- William Somerset Maugham's stories on Malaya, Borneo and Singapore
- W. S. Maugham: correspondence, contracts & manuscripts in Indiana University
- W. Somerset Maugham at the Internet Book List
- W. Somerset Maugham and Beaufort County, South Carolina – Beaufort County Library
- "The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham" – A Biography of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings.