William Somerset Maugham

Biography

William Somerset Maugham was born on 25 January 1874 at the British Embassy in Paris, where his father worked as a solicitor. He lived in France for his first ten years before moving to England after both parents passed away. Raised by his uncle, a clergyman in Whitstable, Kent, Maugham had a lonely and often unhappy childhood. This experience deeply influenced his writing, particularly his semi-autobiographical novel "Of Human Bondage." He went to King's School, Canterbury, and later Heidelberg University in Germany before studying at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London, qualifying as a doctor in 1897.

Although he qualified as a doctor, Maugham never practiced. His first novel, "Liza of Lambeth," published the same year he qualified, was inspired by his observations in the Lambeth slums during medical training. The book received some attention, but it was his work in the theatre that first brought him widespread recognition. By 1908, four of his plays were running simultaneously in the West End of London, making him a highly successful playwright of the Edwardian era. He wrote for the stage until 1933, producing thirty-two plays.

During World War I, Maugham served in France as an ambulance driver and interpreter before joining the British Secret Service. He did intelligence work in Switzerland and later in Russia in 1917, trying to keep the Provisional Government in the war against Germany. These experiences inspired his Ashenden stories, a series of spy fiction pieces published in the 1920s, considered influential in the espionage genre. Maugham briefly married Syrie Wellcome in 1917 after a three-year affair, and they had a daughter, Liza. The marriage ended in 1929.

From the 1920s, Maugham split his time between his villa on the French Riviera, Cap Ferrat, and extensive travels through Southeast Asia, the Pacific islands, and the Americas. These trips gave him the settings for many of his famous short stories and several novels like "The Painted Veil" and "The Razor's Edge." His work was extensive: besides plays and novels, he published essays, travel writings, and memoirs. His clear, straightforward writing style gained him a large readership, although mid-twentieth-century critics often viewed him as merely competent, a view that later readers and scholars have revisited.

Maugham spent much of his later life at the Villa Mauresque in Cap Ferrat, where he hosted many literary and social figures. In his last years, he had a legal dispute with his daughter Liza over his estate, attempting to leave it to his long-term companion Alan Searle. He died on 16 December 1965 in Nice, at ninety-one. His ashes were buried at the King's School, Canterbury, near the library named after him.