1874 - 1965
William Somerset Maugham (b. 1874) was a British playwright, novelist, and short story writer who became one of the most popular and highest-paid authors of the 1930s. Renowned for his clear, unadorned prose style and keen psychological insight, he drew deeply upon his extensive travels across the globe and his work in the British intelligence service.
Born in Paris to British parents, Maugham was orphaned at an early age and raised by an uncle in Kent before studying medicine at King's College London, though he never practiced. His literary career took off with the publication of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, in 1897, and the triumphant staging of several plays in London during the early 1900s. During the First World War, he served as an ambulance driver in France and later joined the British Secret Service, operating in Switzerland and Russia, experiences that heavily influenced his espionage fiction, most notably Ashenden.
Following the war, Maugham settled at the Villa Mauresque on the French Riviera, which became a celebrated literary salon hosting many of the era's most prominent writers and artists. He spent much of his life traveling to remote regions including the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and India, gathering rich atmospheric details and complex character studies that informed his most celebrated novels and short stories. His sharp observations of human vanity, colonial isolation, and moral ambiguity cemented his enduring reputation as a master storyteller of the human condition.
Essential Reading
- The Narrow Corner (1932): This compelling novel follows a disparate group of castaways and drifters whose lives intersect fatefully on a remote tropical island in the Dutch East Indies.
- The Summing Up (1938): This reflective autobiographical work offers profound insights into Maugham's literary philosophy, writing methods, and personal observations on art and life.
- Of Human Bondage (1915): This sweeping semi-autobiographical masterpiece chronicles a sensitive young man's painful struggles with love, ambition, and physical disability as he searches for meaning.
- The Razor's Edge (1944): This philosophical novel explores a young American veteran's restless departure from conventional society in search of spiritual enlightenment following the trauma of the First World War.
