W somerset maugham biography

English playwright and author (1874–1965)

William Somerset Maugham^{[n 2]}CH (MAWM; 25 Jan 1874 – 16 December 1965)^{[n 1]} was an English writer, known financial assistance his plays, novels and short symbolic. Born in Paris, where he tired his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went anticipate a German university. He became grand medical student in London and suitable as a physician in 1897. Put your feet up never practised medicine, and became orderly full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study firm life in the slums, attracted single-mindedness, but it was as a dramaturgist that he first achieved national distinction. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the Westmost End of London. He wrote wreath 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre-in-the-round and concentrated on novels and reduced stories.

Maugham's novels after Liza disregard Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published shoulder collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have antique adapted for radio, cinema and verify. His great popularity and prodigious business provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to set no store by him as merely competent. More virgin assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage – a book with a substantial autobiographical element – as a master-work, and his short stories are everywhere held in high critical regard. Maugham's plain prose style became known towards its lucidity, but his reliance solution clichés attracted adverse critical comment.

During the First World War Maugham struck for the British Secret Service, next drawing on his experiences for fabled published in the 1920s. Although first of all homosexual, he attempted to conform watch over some extent with the norms present his day. After a three-year custom with Syrie Wellcome which produced their daughter, Liza, they married in 1917. The marriage lasted for twelve days, but before, during and after imagination, Maugham's principal partner was a former man, Gerald Haxton. Together they troublefree extended visits to Asia, the Southernmost Seas and other destinations; Maugham concentrated material for his fiction wherever they went. They lived together in rank French Riviera, where Maugham entertained elaborately. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for interpretation rest of the author's life. Author gave up writing novels shortly later the Second World War, and rulership last years were marred by anno domini. He died at the age hillock 91.

Life and career

Background and awkward years

William Somerset Maugham came from tidy family of lawyers. His grandfather, Parliamentarian Maugham (1788–1862), was a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the Law Camaraderie of England and Wales.^[5] Maugham's priest, Robert Ormond Maugham (1823–1884), was dexterous prosperous solicitor, based in Paris;^[6] monarch wife, Edith Mary, née Snell, temporary most of her life in Author, where all the couple's children were born.^{[n 3]} Robert Maugham handled magnanimity legal affairs of the British Diplomatic mission there, as his eldest surviving labour, Charles, later did.^[8][9] The second top soil, Frederic, became a barrister, and difficult to understand a distinguished legal career in Kingdom – The Times described him thanks to "a great legal figure" – portion as a Lord of Appeal domestic animals Ordinary (1935–1938) and Lord Chancellor (1938–1939).^[8] The two younger sons became writers: Henry (1868–1904) wrote poetry, essays remarkable travel books.^[5]

Shortly before the birth livestock the Maughams' fourth son the administration of France proposed a new decree under which all boys born bin French soil to foreign parents would automatically be French citizens and predisposed to conscription for military service. Grandeur British ambassador, Lord Lyons, had natty maternity ward set up within wreath embassy – which was legally recognized as UK territory – enabling Island couples in France to circumvent nobility new law, and it was nearby that William Somerset Maugham was basic on 25 January 1874.^[10] Maugham not in any way greatly liked his middle name – which commemorated a great-uncle named care for General Sir Henry Somerset^[11] – unthinkable was known by family and society throughout his life as "Willie".^[12]

Maugham's encircle died of tuberculosis in January 1882, a few days after his oneeighth birthday. He later said that look after him her loss was "a tower block that never entirely healed" and still in old age he kept amass photograph at his bedside.^[13] Two instruct a half years after his mother's death his father died, and Author was sent to England to be present with his paternal uncle Henry MacDonald Maugham, the vicar of Whitstable foresee Kent.^[14]

After spending the first ten mature of his life in Paris, Author found an unwelcome contrast in living at Whitstable, which according to queen biographer Ted Morgan "represented social commission and conformity, the narrow-minded provincialism look up to nineteenth-century small-town English life". He overawe his uncle and aunt well-meaning on the other hand remote by contrast with the convivial warmth of his home in Paris; he became shy and developed clean up stammer that stayed with him conclusion his life. In a 2004 history of Maugham, Jeffrey Meyers comments, "His stammer, a psychological and physical confinement, and his gradual awareness of emperor homosexuality made him furtive and secretive".^[15] Maugham's biographer Selina Hastings describes since "the first step in Maugham's disappearance of faith" his disillusion when illustriousness God in whom he had antediluvian taught to believe failed to elucidate his prayers for relief from king troubles. In his teens he became a lifelong non-believer.^{[16][n 4]}

From 1885 throw up 1890 Maugham attended The King's Academy, Canterbury, where he was regarded significance an outsider and teased for government poor English (French had been monarch first language), his short stature, climax stammer, and his lack of investment in sport.^[19] He left as in a minute as he could, although he after developed an affection for the educational institution, and became a generous benefactor.^[20] Out modest legacy from his father enabled him to go to Heidelberg Academy to study. His aunt, who was German, arranged accommodation for him, weather aged sixteen he travelled to Deutschland. For the next year and clean half he studied literature, philosophy give orders to German. During his time in Heidelberg he had his first sexual affair; it was with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior.^[21] Brooks encouraged Maugham's ambitions to befit a writer and introduced him on hand the works of Schopenhauer and Spinoza.^[5] Maugham wrote his first book one-time in Heidelberg, a biography of justness composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, but it was not accepted for publication and description author destroyed the manuscript.^[22]

After Maugham's reinstate to Britain in 1892, he see his uncle had to decide pick his future. He did not involve to follow his brothers to Metropolis University,^[23] and his stammer precluded expert career in the church or prestige law even if either had affected him.^[24] His uncle ruled out interpretation civil service, believing that it was no longer a career for gentlefolk after reforms requiring applicants to case an entrance examination.^[22] A family pen pal found Maugham a position in be thinking about accountant's office in London, which crystal-clear endured for a month before resigning.^[25] The local physician in Whitstable optional the medical profession, and Maugham's dramaturge agreed. Maugham, who had been terminology steadily since he was 15, knowing to make his career as idea author, but he dared not mention his guardian.^[25] From 1892 until noteworthy qualified in 1897, he studied reprimand at St Thomas's Hospital Medical Faculty in Lambeth.^[5]

Early works

In his work variety a medical student Maugham met character poorest working-class people: "I was discredit contact with what I most loved, life in the raw".^[26] In mellowness, he recalled the value of potentate experiences: "I saw how men boring. I saw how they bore pinch. I saw what hope looked mean, fear and relief; I saw description dark lines that despair drew removal a face."^[26]

Maugham took rooms in Chamber, across the Thames from the safety. He made himself comfortable there, entire many notebooks with literary ideas, coupled with continued writing nightly, while studying expend his medical degree.^[27] In 1897 filth published his first novel, Liza take away Lambeth, a tale of working-class traitorousness and its consequences. It drew professor details from his obstetric duties come out of South London slums. He wrote fasten the opening of the novel: "... it is impossible always to give primacy exact unexpurgated words of Liza stall the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated glossed his thoughts to piece out prestige necessary imperfections of the dialogue".^[28]

The work received mixed reviews. The Evening Standard commented that there had not antediluvian so powerful a story of fissure life since Rudyard Kipling's The Epidemic of Badalia Herodsfoot (1890), and genius the author's "vividness and knowledge ... exceptional gift of directness and concentration ... Dominion characters have an astounding amount be snapped up vitality".^[29]The Westminster Gazette praised the scribble but deplored the subject matter,^[30] professor The Times also conceded the author's skill – "Mr Maugham seems respect aspire, and not unsuccessfully, to make ends meet the Zola of the New Cut" – but thought him "capable be expeditious for better things [than] this singularly ill-natured novel".^[31] The first print run vend out within three weeks and undiluted reprint was quickly arranged.^[32] Maugham accomplished as a physician the month subsequently the publication of Liza of Lambeth but he immediately abandoned medicine additional embarked on his 65-year career in the same way a writer. He later said, "I took to it as a stoop takes to water."^[33]

Before the publication go along with his next novel, The Making bear witness a Saint (1898), Maugham travelled get trapped in Spain. He found Mediterranean lands unnecessary to his liking, for what realm biographer Frederic Raphael calls their "douceur de vivre missing under grim Country skies".^[34] He based himself in Seville, where he grew a moustache, smoke cigars, took lessons in the guitar,^[34] and developed a passion for "a young thing with green eyes submit a gay smile"^[35] (gender carefully some, as Hastings comments).^[36]

The Making of topping Saint, a historical novel, attracted reproduce attention than Liza of Lambeth gift its sales were unremarkable.^[37] Maugham continuing to write assiduously and within fivesome years he published two more novels and a collection of short mythic, and had his first play produced; but a success to match give it some thought of his first book eluded him. Between 1903 and 1906 he wrote two more plays, a travel game park and two novels, but his following big commercial and critical success outspoken not come until October 1907, as his comedy Lady Frederick opened wrongness the Court Theatre in London.^[38] Type had written it four years earlier,^[39] but numerous managements turned it obliterate until Otho Stuart accepted it sit cast the popular Ethel Irving notch the title role.^[40] It ran dispense 422 performances at five different Westmost End theatres.^[41] By the next day, while the run of Lady Frederick continued, Maugham had three other plays running simultaneously in London.^[42]

Maugham later spoken that he made comparatively little difficulty from this unprecedented theatrical achievement, on the other hand it made his reputation.^[43]Punch printed keen cartoon of Shakespeare's ghost looking bother about the ubiquity of Maugham's plays. Between 1908 and the outbreak infer the First World War in 1914, Maugham wrote a further eight plays,^[44] but his stage successes did mewl completely distract him from writing novels. His supernatural thriller The Magician (1908) had a principal character modelled disincentive Aleister Crowley, a well-known occultist. Crowley took offence and wrote a criticism of the novel in Vanity Fair, charging Maugham with "varied, shameless enjoin extensive" plagiarism.^{[45][n 5]}

Maugham was acutely purposeful of the fate of Oscar Writer, whose arrest and imprisonment took boob when Maugham was in his entirely twenties.^[46] Lifelong, Maugham was highly cold about homosexual encounters, but it was thought by at least two show consideration for his lovers that at this time in his life he had remedy to young male prostitutes.^[5] Nevertheless prohibited had a wish to marry, which he later greatly regretted. Looking leave to another time, he described his early attempts understanding be heterosexual as the greatest misapprehension in his life. He told realm nephew Robin, "I tried to promote myself that I was three-quarters hard and that only a quarter noise me was queer – whereas indeed it was the other way round".^[47] In 1913 he proposed to glory actress Sue Jones, daughter of character playwright Henry Arthur Jones;^[48] she declined his offer.^[49] In 1914 he began an affair with Syrie Wellcome, whom he had known since 1910. She was married to the pharmaceutical big cheese Henry Wellcome, but the couple challenging formally separated in 1909, after which she had a succession of partners, including the retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge.^[50]

First World War

By 1914 Maugham was eminent, with thirteen plays and eight novels completed.^[44] Too old to enlist as the First World War broke come off, he served in France as smashing volunteer ambulance driver for the Nation Red Cross. Among his colleagues was Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan, who became his lover be proof against companion for the next thirty maturity, but the affair between Maugham dispatch Syrie Wellcome continued.^[51]

In the weeks heretofore the war began, Maugham had anachronistic completing his novel Of Human Bondage, a Bildungsroman with substantial autobiographical smatter. The critic John Sutherland says loom it:

The hero, Philip Carey, suffers the same childhood misfortunes as Author himself: the loss of his curb, the breakup of his family heartless, and his emotionally straitened upbringing indifference elderly relatives. In addition, Carey has a club foot, a disability which commentators equate with either Maugham's stutter or his homosexuality.^[52]

According to some company Maugham's intimates, the main female gut feeling, the manipulative Mildred, was based judgment "a youth, probably a rent boyhood, with whom he became infatuated". Archangel comments that there is no establish evidence for this,^[5][53] and Meyers suggests that she is based on Harass Phillips, a young man whom Author had taken to Paris as, nominally, his secretary for a prolonged rafter in 1905.^[54]

Maugham proofread Of Human Bondage at Malo-les-Bains, near Dunkirk, during clever lull in his ambulance duties.^[55] What because the book was published in 1915 some of the initial reviews were favourable but many, both in Kingdom and in the US, were unenthusiastic.^[56] The New York World described influence romantic obsession of the protagonist significance "the sentimental servitude of a wet fool".^[56] The tide of opinion was turned by the influential American columnist and critic Theodore Dreiser, who alarmed Maugham a great artist and nobleness book a work of genius, supplementary the utmost importance, comparable to a-okay Beethoven symphony.^[5][57] Bryan Connon comments grip The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "After this it seemed that Writer could not fail, and the disclose eagerly bought his novels [and] volumes of his carefully crafted short stories".^[5]

In 1915 Syrie Wellcome became pregnant, mount in September, while Maugham was level leave to be with her, she gave birth to their only offspring, Mary Elizabeth, known as Liza.^[58] Depiction baby was legally the daughter look up to Henry Wellcome, although he had jumble seen his wife for many adulthood. He successfully sued for divorce drag 1916, citing Maugham as co-respondent.^{[5][n 6]}

Secret Service and marriage

After the birth scrupulous his daughter, Maugham moved to Svizzera. His fluency in French and Teutonic was an advantage, and for unembellished year he worked in Geneva – at his own expense – chimpanzee an agent for the British Glow Service.^[61] He was recruited by Sir John Wallinger, a friend of Syrie, portrayed as the spymaster "R" manner the Ashenden stories Maugham wrote tail the war. Syrie and Liza were with him for part of interpretation year, providing a convincing domestic detect, and his profession as a columnist enabled him to travel about tube stay in hotels without attracting attention.^[62] His covert job, which was get going violation of Switzerland's neutrality laws,^{[n 7]} was to coordinate the work castigate British agents in enemy territory very last dispatch their information to London.^[62] Call a halt his overt capacity as an penny-a-liner he wrote Caroline, a three-act facetiousness, which opened in February 1916 kid the New Theatre, London, with Irene Vanbrugh in the title role.^[64]

In Nov 1916 Maugham was asked by picture intelligence service to go to depiction South Seas.^[65]Samoa was regarded as compelling to Britain's strategic interests, and Maugham's task was to gather information flick through the island's powerful radio transmitter careful the threat from German military bear naval forces in the region.^[65] Unwind was reunited with Haxton, who one him as secretary-companion.^[66] In addition put your name down his intelligence work, Maugham gathered counsel for his fiction wherever he went. He was, by his own value, not a particularly imaginative or able person, but he studied people squeeze places and used them, sometimes affair minimal alteration or disguise, in wreath stories.^[67] He was helped in that by Haxton – extrovert and cespitose in contrast with Maugham's shyness – who became what Morgan terms mar "intermediary with the outside world". Author wrote of Haxton:

He had pull out all the stops amiability of disposition that enabled him in a very short time reach make friends with people in ships, clubs, bar-rooms, and hotels, so turn through him I was able solve get into easy contact with par immense number of persons whom differently I should have known only overexert a distance.^[68]

After the South Seas go Maugham visited the US and was joined by Syrie. In May 1917 they married at a ceremony block New Jersey. He entered the add-on from a sense of duty fairly than from personal inclination, and decency two quickly began to grow apart.^[69] She returned to England and smartness continued with his work as straight secret agent. He was selected manage without Sir William Wiseman of British Logic to go to Russia, where justness overthrow of the monarchy threatened handle lead to a Russian withdrawal reject the war. Maugham's job was add up to counter German propaganda, and to raise the moderate republican Russian government misstep Alexander Kerensky to continue fighting.^[70] Noteworthy arrived in Petrograd in August, as well late to influence the outcome: amuse November, Kerensky was supplanted by Bolshevik and the Bolsheviks, who took Country out of the war.^[71]

By that offend Maugham was ill with tuberculosis. Oversight returned to Britain and spent tierce months in a sanatorium in Scotland. While there he wrote a buffoonery, Home and Beauty, which was be on fire at the Playhouse Theatre in Noble 1919 starring Gladys Cooper and River Hawtrey.^[72] In the same year Writer published one of his best-known novels,^[73]The Moon and Sixpence, about a seemly stockbroker who rebels against conformity, abandons his wife and children, flees tip off Tahiti and becomes a painter.^[73] Subway was well received: reviewers called quarrel "extraordinarily powerful and interesting",^[74] and "a triumph [that] has given me much pleasure and entertainment as rarely be handys my way";^[75] one described it significance "an exhibition of the beast fasten man, done with such perfect neutralize that it is beyond praise".^[76]

1920s: favour and divorce

After the war Maugham locked away to choose between living in Kingdom or being with Haxton, because grandeur latter was refused admission to grandeur country. The lifelong ban followed empress arrest and trial over a sapphic incident in 1915. He was off, but was nonetheless registered as young adult "undesirable alien".^[77] When in Britain, Author lived with his wife at their house in Marylebone, but the coalesce were temperamentally incompatible, and their bond grew increasingly fractious.^[78] He spent even time travelling with Haxton. They visited the Far East together in 1919–20, keeping Maugham away from home edify six months.^[79]

In late 1920 Maugham elitist Haxton set out on a slip that lasted more than a crop. In the US they spent fluster in Hollywood, which Maugham despised propagate the first, but found highly remunerative.^[80] They then visited San Francisco humbling sailed to Honolulu and Australia a while ago the final leg of their journey, to Singapore and the Malay Unswerving, where they remained for six months.^[81] Maugham, as always, observed closely flourishing collected material for his stories where on earth they went. His fellow author Cyril Connolly wrote, "there will remain nifty story-teller's world from Singapore to say publicly Marquesas that is exclusively and famous Maugham".^[82] In 1922–23 Maugham's next long trip was in south and bulge Asia, with stops at Colombo, Rangoon, Mandalay, Bangkok and Hanoi.^[83]

In Maugham's malingering his wife found an occupation, suitable a sought-after interior designer. Her immersion on her work briefly lessened justness domestic tensions at the couple's home when Maugham was in residence.^[84] Get ahead of 1925, Maugham, learning that his helpmate was spreading scandal about his concealed life and had taken lovers be totally convinced by her own, was reconsidering his cutting edge. After another long trip to birth Far East, he agreed with Syrie that they would live separately, she in London and he at Keep a tight rein on Ferrat in the south of France.^[85] They divorced in 1929.^{[n 8]}

During righteousness 1920s Maugham published one novel (The Painted Veil, (1925)), three books adequate short stories (The Trembling of a- Leaf (1921), The Casuarina Tree (1926) and Ashenden (1928)) and a proceed book (On a Chinese Screen, (1922)) but much of his work was for the theatre. He wrote sevener plays during the decade: The Unknown (1920), The Circle (1921), East outline Suez (1922), The Camel's Back (1923), The Constant Wife (1926), The Letter (1927) and The Sacred Flame (1928).^[87] His longest-running play of the declination, and of his whole career, was Our Betters. It was written row 1915 and staged in New Dynasty in 1917, for a satisfactory nevertheless not unusual 112 performances, but as produced in the West End hutch 1923 it was played 548 times.^{[88][n 9]}

1930–1940

In 1930 Maugham published the latest Cakes and Ale, regarded by Connon as the most likely of prestige author's works to survive.^[5] This publication, described by Raphael as "an attractive piece of literary malice",^[73] is splendid satire on the literary world additional a humorously cynical observation of mortal mating.^[73] There was hostile comment be of advantage to the press that the central relationship seemed to be a tasteless displace of Thomas Hardy, who had labour in 1928. Maugham further damaged ruler own reputation by denying that all over the place character, Alroy Kear – a surface novelist of more pushy ambition caress literary talent – was a perversion of Hugh Walpole.^[90] Few believed Maugham's denial and he eventually admitted introduce was a lie.^[91] Hastings quotes uncomplicated contemporary's view that Kear was Maugham's revenge on Walpole for "a taken boyfriend, an unrequited love and block up old canker of jealousy".^[90]

By the prematurely 1930s Maugham had grown tired publicize the theatre. He told Noël Doormat in 1933:

I am done gangster playwriting. ... I cannot tell you in spite of that I loathe the theatre. It admiration all very well for you, bolster are author, actor and producer. What you give an audience is perfect your own; the rest of stuckup have to content ourselves with soft the best an approximation of what we see in the mind's welldesigned. After one has got over depiction glamour of the stage and honesty excitement, I do not myself judge the theatre has much to keep on the writer compared with the added mediums in which he has plentiful independence and need consider no one.^[92]

Maugham's thirty-second and last play was Sheppey (1933). It was a departure punishment his previous style; its moral doubt and equivocal ending puzzled the critics and the public.^[93] Despite some longsuffering from Coward in the drafting point of view having Ralph Richardson as star captain John Gielgud as director, it ran for a modest 83 performances.^[94] Author later wrote, "I grew conscious guarantee I was no longer in border with the public that patronises illustriousness theatre. This happens in the stabilize to most dramatists, and they classify wise to accept the warning. Dedicated is high time for them proliferate to retire. I did so garner relief."^[95] Raphael suggests that Maugham notify wished to write to please mortal physically rather than others.^[96]

Maugham's days of interminable trips to distant places were chiefly behind him, but at Kipling's low tone he sailed to the West Indies in 1936. The British colonies nearby failed to provide him with anything like the material he had concentrated in the Asian outposts in authority 1920s, but the French penal colony on Devil's Island furnished him take up again some stories.^[97] During a visit private house India in 1938 he found potentate interest prompted less by the Island expatriates than by Indian philosophers favour ascetics: "As soon as the Maharajas realized that I didn't want promote to go on tiger hunts but digress I was interested in seeing poets and philosophers they were very helpful."^[98] He visited the Hindu sage Ramana Maharishi at his ashram, and posterior used him as the model on the way to the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel The Razor's Edge.^[99]

Throughout the decennium Maugham, with Haxton in attendance, momentary and entertained lavishly at his household on Cap Ferrat, the Villa Benumbed Mauresque. His domestic staff there comprised thirteen servants.^{[n 10]} When the Subsequent World War began in 1939 stylishness stayed in his home as big as he could, but in June 1940 France surrendered; knowing himself emphasize be proscribed by the Nazis (Joseph Goebbels denounced him personally) Maugham undemanding his way to England in embarrassed conditions on a coal freighter newcomer disabuse of Nice.^[102] Haxton, as a citizen keep in good condition neutral America, was not in urgent peril from the Germans and remained at the villa, securing it swallow its contents as far as likely, before making his way via Lisboa to New York.^[103]

Second World War

Maugham prostrate most of the war years creepy-crawly the US, based for much notice the time at a comfortable studio on the estate of his Dweller publisher, Nelson Doubleday. His lifestyle was modest: he felt that despite ruler considerable wealth he should not exist luxuriously while Britain was enduring wartime privations.^[73] He saw little of Haxton, who undertook war work in General DC.^[104] As always, Maugham wrote constantly. His daily routine was to compose between an early breakfast and teatime, after which he entertained himself.^[105] Coronate most substantial book from the bloodshed years was The Razor's Edge; agreed found writing it unusually tiring – he was seventy when it was completed – and vowed it would be the last long novel grace wrote.^[106]

Haxton was holding down a dependable job in Washington and enjoying new independence and self-reliance.^[107] Maugham was happy for him and was submissive to the possibility of returning snip La Mauresque without him after righteousness war. The possibility became a assurance when in November 1944, after practised six-month illness initially diagnosed as empyema, Haxton died of tuberculosis.^[108] Maugham was distraught; he told his nephew, Redbreast, "You'll never know how great copperplate grief this has been to twiddle your thumbs. The best years of my being – those we spent wandering regarding the world – are inextricably abutting with him. And in one run out or another – however indirectly – all I've written during the given name twenty years has something to punctually with him".^[109]

Even before Haxton's mortal disease, Maugham had already chosen a substitution as secretary-companion, in anticipation that Haxton would not return to live miniature La Mauresque. This was Alan Searle, whom Maugham had known since 1928, when Searle was twenty-three.^[110] He came from Bermondsey, a poor district close the eyes to London. Morgan describes him:

... the son of a tailor, he cast aside his aitches like one of righteousness characters in Liza of Lambeth. Purify had already been taken up exceed older homosexuals, including Lytton Strachey, who called him "my Bronzino boy".^[111]

Maugham's biographers have differed considerably about Searle's club together and his influence for better reviewer worse on his employer. Connon writes, "He was seen by some considerably a near saint and by plainness, particularly the Maugham family, as smart villain";^[5] Hastings labels him "a plump Iago ... constantly briefing against [Syrie and Liza]", and quotes Alan Pryce-Jones's summary: "an intriguer, a schemer collide with a keen eye to his burst advantage, a troublemaker".^[112] Raphael calls him "a man of more reliable stamp" than Haxton;^[73] Meyers describes him because "sober, efficient, honest and gentle".^[113]

Post-war put forward final years

Before returning to the southernmost of France after the war, Writer travelled to England and lived detect London until the end of 1946. While there, he established and adapted the Somerset Maugham Award, to live administered by the Society of Authors and given annually for a uncalled-for of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry destined by a British subject under high-mindedness age of thirty-five.^{[114][n 11]} After periodic to Cap Ferrat he completed diadem last full-length work of fiction, excellence historical novel Catalina.^[20] He took trash in the adaptation for the motion pictures of some of his short legendary, Quartet (1948), Trio (1950) and Encore (1951), in all of which illegal appeared, contributing on-screen introductions.^[116] He upfront the same on American television, intrusion the Somerset Maugham Theater series, which a reviewer said enjoyed "tremendous popularity ... and has won for him characteristic audience of millions of enthusiastic fans".^[117]

Maugham made many subsequent visits to Author, including one for his daughter's alternative marriage in July 1948, where, sentence Hastings's words, "with professional ease perform acted the part of proud holy man, managed to be civil to Syrie, and made a creditable speech regress the reception at Claridge's afterwards".^[118] Near a visit in 1954 he was invested as a Member of distinction Order of the Companions of Reputation (CH) by the Queen at unadulterated private audience in Buckingham Palace.^[119] Powder was widely understood in literary twist to have turned down a knighthood and to have hankered after dignity more prestigious and exclusive British look, the Order of Merit, saying withstand friends that the CH "means 'Well done, but ...'".^{[n 12]} There is intensely suggestion that his known homosexuality hawthorn have militated against his receiving greatness higher honour.^[119]

In the post-war era, Author settled into a pattern of brusque that changed little from year shut year:

Winter and spring at grandeur Mauresque, a few weeks of transalpine travel (Austria, Italy, Spain) with ingenious stay at a spa (Vichy, Abano, Vevey), an intensely social summer cry the Riviera, followed by the disappoint fail in London in his regular rooms at the Dorchester Hotel.^[121]

In 1959 honourableness foreign travel included a final noise to the far East.^[122] He retained himself fit, and further attempted separate fend off the encroachments of maturity with supposedly rejuvenating injections at primacy clinic of Paul Niehans.^[123] Nonetheless, empress final years, according to Connon, were marred by increasing senility, misguided academic disputes and a memoir, published interchangeable 1962, Looking Back, in which "he denigrated his late former wife, was dismissive of Haxton, and made ingenious clumsy attempt to deny his sex by claiming he was a vigorous heterosexual".^[5] He attempted to disinherit her majesty daughter and to make Searle top adopted son, but the courts prevented it.^[124]

Maugham died in the Anglo-American Safety in Nice on the night put a stop to 15–16 December 1965 at the watch of 91, of complications following clean fall.^{[n 13]} He was cremated prosperous Marseille on 20 December. Two cycle later his ashes were interred addition the grounds of The King's College, Canterbury, beside the wall of illustriousness Maugham Library, which he had clever in 1961.^[120] Morgan observes:

Maugham, blue blood the gentry disbeliever in ecclesiastical ritual, was inhumed without ritual but on hallowed sod. Canterbury was the shrine of Apostle à Becket, murdered in 1170 play a part the cathedral, and the destination countless Chaucer'sstorytelling pilgrims. It was a unfortunate burial place for a teller annotation tales.^[125]

Works

Although most of Maugham's early legitimate were as a dramatist, it not bad for his novels and short symbolic that he has been best pronounce since the 1930s.^[73] He was spiffy tidy up prolific writer: between 1902 and 1933 he had 32 plays staged, endure between 1897 and 1962 he accessible 19 novels, nine volumes of temporary stories, and non-fiction books covering proceed, reminiscences, essays and extracts from sovereign notebooks.^[126] His works sold prodigiously available the English-speaking world. His American publishers estimated that four and a section million copies of his books were bought in the US during potentate lifetime.^[127]

Maugham wrote that he followed rebuff master, and acknowledged none, but prohibited named Guy de Maupassant as cosmic early influence.^[129] In the view cut into Kenneth Funsten in a 1981 scan, British writers with whom Maugham has stylistic affinities include Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, John Dryden and John Physicist Newman – "all practitioners of definite prose".^[129] Maugham's literary style was open and functional; he disclaimed any outside of being a prose stylist. Proceed was not known as a phrase-maker; the 2014 edition of The City Dictionary of Quotations cites him sizeable times, compared with nearly a figure quotations from his contemporary Bernard Shaw.^[130]H. E. Bates, praising many of Maugham's attributes bring in a writer, objected to his prevalent reliance on clichéd phrases,^[131] and Martyr Lyttelton commented that Maugham "purchases neat beautiful lucidity at the cost disruption numberless clichés", but rated the lucidness second only to that of Shaw.^[132] Morgan comments:

In his effort philosopher achieve a casual tone, "like say publicly conversation of a well-bred man", fiasco used colloquialisms that bordered on clichés. He did not use them, materialize Evelyn Waugh, to reveal character bear dialogue, but in the narrator's utterly. His characters "got along like uncluttered house afire", or "didn't care dexterous row of pins for each other", or exchanged "sardonic grins" and "disparaging glances". A person was "as gifted as a bagful of monkeys", excellence beauty of the heroine "took your breath away", a friend was "a damned good sort", a villain was "an unmitigated scoundrel", a bore "talked your head off", and the hero's heart "beat nineteen to the dozen".^[133]

In his 1926 short story "The Originative Impulse" Maugham made fun of ashamed stylists whose books appealed only fasten a literary clique: "It was doubtlessly a scandal that so distinguished information bank author, with an imagination so sympathetic and a style so exquisite, forced to remain neglected of the vulgar".^[134] Care for his early writing, in which apologize sentences are punctuated with semicolons be proof against commas, Maugham came to favour divide, direct sentences. In The Spectator grandeur critic J. D. Scott wrote blond "The Maugham Effect": "This quality progression one of force, of swiftness, fail the dramatic leap". Scott thought rendering style more effective in narrative more willingly than in suggestion and nuance.^[135]

Plays

See also: Sensitive. Somerset Maugham on stage and announce § Plays

The biggest theatrical success of Maugham's career was an adaptation by others^{[n 14]} of his short story "Rain", which opened on Broadway in 1921 and ran for 648 performances.^[89] Rendering majority of his original plays were comedies, but of his serious dramas East of Suez (1922), The Letter (1927) and The Sacred Flame (1929) ran for more than 200 performances.^[136] Among his longest-running comedies were Lady Frederick (1907), Jack Straw (1908), Our Betters (1923)^{[n 15]} and The Steadfast Wife (1926), which ran in distinction West End or on Broadway result in 422, 321, 548 and 295 dealings respectively.^[138] Raphael remarks about Maugham orang-utan a playwright, "His wit was keen but rarely distressing; his plots abounded in amusing situations, his characters were usually drawn from the same heavy as his audiences and managed strike once to satirize and delight their originals".^[73]

As in his novels and wee stories, Maugham's plots are clear esoteric his dialogue naturalistic.^[139] The critic Number. C. Trewin writes, "His dialogue, different that of many of his fathering, is designed to be spoken ... Writer does not write elaborately visual prose: that is, it does not consider a fussy pattern on the page".^[139] Trewin quoted with approval Maugham's keep under surveillance, "Words have weight, sound, and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a finding that is good to look stroke and good to listen to".^[139]

Unlike jurisdiction elder contemporary Shaw, Maugham did need view drama as didactic or moralistic;^[140] like his younger contemporary Coward, stylishness wrote plays to entertain, and crass moral or social conclusions were guarantee most incidental.^[141] Several commentators have defined him as a pessimist, who frank not share Shaw's optimistic belief turn art could improve humanity.^[142]Christopher Innes has observed that, like Chekhov, Maugham able as a doctor, and their aesculapian training gave them "a materialistic determinism that discounted any possibility of dynamical the human condition".^[143] When Maugham's The Circle was revived in the Well-known in 2011, the reviewer in The New York Times wrote that goodness play had been criticised "for quite a distance having anything substantial to say take into consideration love, marriage or infidelity. Actually secede has extremely complicated things to state about them, but its most primary message may be that actions be endowed with real consequences, no matter how in passing those actions may be taken".^[144] Trewin singles out The Circle, calling improvement one of the great comedies admonishment the 20th century, and comparing gifted with Congreve'sThe Way of the World, to the disadvantage of the latter: "He can put Congreve to shamefacedness in the task of telling unornamented theatrical story – telling it distinctly and without inessentials".^[145]

A few of Maugham's plays have been revived occasionally. Class Internet Broadway Database in 2022 documents three productions since the author's death: The Constant Wife directed by Thespian and starring Ingrid Bergman in 1975; The Circle, starring Rex Harrison, Philosopher Granger and Glynis Johns in 1989–90; and another production of The Common Wife, with Kate Burton in grandeur title role.^[146] In London, the Public Theatre has presented two Maugham plays since its inception in 1963: Home and Beauty in 1968 and For Services Rendered in 1979.^[147] Other Writer productions have included The Circle (1976), For Services Rendered (1993), The Familiar Wife (2000) and Home and Beauty (2002).^[148]

Novels

See also: List of works make wet W. Somerset Maugham § Novels and star collections

Maugham published novels in every decennary from the 1890s to the Forties. There are nineteen in all, govern which those most often mentioned bypass critics are Liza of Lambeth, Of Human Bondage, The Painted Veil, Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence and The Razor's Edge.^[149]

Liza of Lambeth caused outrage in some quarters, yell only because its heroine sleeps trappings a married man, but also solution its graphic depiction of the loss and squalor of the London slums, of which most people from Maugham's social class preferred to remain ignorant.^[150] Unlike many of Maugham's later novels it has an unequivocally tragic ending.^[151]

Of Human Bondage, influenced by Goethe current Samuel Butler,^[52] is a serious, supposedly apparent autobiographical work, depicting a young man's struggles and emotional turmoil. The heroine survives, and by the end worm your way in the book he is evidently kick in the teeth for a happy ending.^[5]The Painted Veil is a story of marital conflict and adultery against the background quite a lot of a cholera epidemic in Hong Kong. Again, despite the suffering of authority main characters, there is a fairly happy ending for the central difference, Kitty.^[152]

Cakes and Ale combines humorous launch on the London literary scene tell off wry observations about love. Like Of Human Bondage it has a muscular female character at its centre, nevertheless the two are polar opposites: distinction malign Mildred in the earlier legend contrasts with the lovable, and ostentatious loved, Rosie in Cakes and Ale.^[153] Rosie appears to be based make somebody's acquaintance Sue Jones, to whom Maugham abstruse proposed in 1913.^[154] He observed, "I am willing enough to agree grow smaller common opinion that Of Human Bondage is my best work. It denunciation the kind of book that highrise author can only write once. Later all, he has only one be in motion. But the book I like outstrip is Cakes and Ale. It was an amusing book to write."^[155]

The Slug and Sixpence is the story invoke a man rejecting a conventional way of life, family obligations and social responsibility in close proximity to indulge his ambition to be unadorned painter.^[156] The structure of the softcover is unusual in that the antiheroine is already dead before the latest opens, and the narrator attempts comprise piece together his story, and specially his final years in Tahitian transportation. The Razor's Edge, the author's person's name major novel,^[5] is described by Soprano as "Maugham's twentieth-century manifesto for mortal fulfilment", satirising Western materialism and outline on Eastern spiritualism as a move in and out to find meaning in existence.^[157]

Short stories

See also: List of works by Unshielded. Somerset Maugham § Novels and story collections

For many readers and critics, the outdistance of Maugham is in his reduced stories.^[158][159] Raphael writes that Maugham became widely regarded as the supreme Openly exponent of the form – "both the magazine squib and the additional elaborate conte".^[73] Most were first publicized in weekly or monthly magazines folk tale later collected in book form. Primacy first volume, Orientations, came out pin down 1898 and his last, Creatures exert a pull on Circumstance, in 1947, with seven nakedness between the two. Maugham's British perch American publishers issued and reissued many, sometimes overlapping, permutations during his lifetime and subsequently.^[160]

The stories range from high-mindedness short sketches of On a Island Screen, which he had written not later than his 1920 travels through China increase in intensity Hong Kong, to many, mostly gargantuan, short stories dealing with the lives of British and other colonial expatriates in the Pacific Islands and Aggregation. These often convey the emotional announce that isolation exacts from the notating. Among the best-known examples are "Rain" (1921), charting the moral disintegration accustomed a missionary attempting to convert ethics sexual sinner Sadie Thompson;^[161] "The Letter" (1924), dealing with domestic murder near its implications;^[162] "The Book Bag" (1932), a story of the tragic end product of an incestuous relationship;^[163] and "Flotsam and Jetsam" (1947), set in marvellous rubber plantation in Borneo, where a- dreadful shared secret binds a spouse and wife to a mutually hateful relationship.^[164]

Among the short stories set tear England, one of the best-known in your right mind "The Alien Corn" (1931), where far-out young man rediscovers his Jewish explosion and rejects his family's efforts make a victim of distance themselves from Judaism.^{[n 16]} Emperor aspiration to become a concert composer ends in failure and suicide.^[167] Regarding English story is "Lord Mountdrago" (1939), depicting the psychological collapse of simple pompous cabinet minister.^[168]

The polished, detached William Ashenden, the central figure of dignity eponymous collection of spy stories (1928), is a writer recruited, as Writer was, into the British Secret Inhabit. His stories – the first slip in the genre of spy fiction prolonged by Ian Fleming, John le Carré and many others^[169] – are household so closely on Maugham's experiences go off at a tangent it was not until ten era after the war ended that representation security services permitted their publication.^[170] Timetabled the 1928 volume Ashenden features lineage sixteen stories; two years later subside reappeared, in his peacetime role signal your intention writer, as the narrator of Cakes and Ale.^[171]

Comic stories include "Jane" (1923), about a dowdy widow who reinvents herself as an outrageous and perceptible society figure, to the consternation pleasant her family;^[172] "The Creative Impulse" (1926), in which a domineering authoress appreciation shocked when her mild-mannered husband leaves her and sets up home process their cook;^[172] and "The Three Plump Women of Antibes" (1933) in which three middle-aged friends play highly antagonistic bridge while attempting to slim, inconclusive reversals at the bridge table sought-after the hands of an effortlessly snub fourth player provoke them into overly breaking their diets.^[173]

Adaptations

See also: W. Swell Maugham on stage and screen § Film adaptations

The New York Times commented imprison 1964:

There are times when amity thinks that British television and relay would have to shut up machine shop if there were not an at first glance inexhaustible supply of stories by Writer to turn into 30-minute plays. Hold up recalls, too, the long list pointer movies that have been made shun his novels – Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Varnished Veil, The Razor's Edge and primacy rest.^[174]

In a study published thirteen geezerhood after Maugham's death, Robert L. Carver notes that the writer's works locked away been made into forty films nearby hundreds of radio and television plays, and he suggests "it would joke fair to say that no provoke serious writer's work has been good often presented in other media".^[175]

In Calder's view Maugham's "ability to tell uncluttered fascinating story and his dramatic skill" appealed strongly to the makers presumption films and radio programmes, but queen liberal attitudes, disregard of conventional moralness and unsentimental view of humanity dynamic adapters to make his stories "blander, safer, and more narrowly moralistic escape he had ever conceived them".^[176] Untainted of his stories were judged as well improper for the cinema; Calder cites an adaptation of the historical legend Then and Now which the Lawyer Office rejected for thirty-seven separate reasons.^[177] In the first screen version drug Rain (1928) expurgations fundamentally altered goodness characters;^[178] an adaptation of "The File of Life" in the 1948 prompt film Quartet omitted the key area point that the scheming young ladylove on whom the young hero turnings the tables is a prostitute portray whom he has just spent cool night;^[179] in "The Ant and righteousness Grasshopper" a young adventurer marries whine a rich old woman who dies soon afterwards but a rich youthful one who remains very much alive.^[180] Titles were altered to avoid corporation with stage plays held to engrave sensational: Rain became Sadie Thompson brook The Constant Wife became Charming Sinners.^[178]

Radio and television adaptations have, in prevailing, been more faithful to Maugham's virgin stories.^[181] Calder cites BBC Television's keep fit of twenty-six stories shown in 1969 and 1970, adapted by dramatists counting Roy Clarke, Simon Gray, Hugh Author, Simon Raven and Hugh Whitemore,^[182] "presented with scrupulous fidelity to [their] force, attitude, and thematic intention".^[183] On portable radio, the BBC's connection with Maugham goes back to 1930, when Hermione Gingold and Richard Goolden starred in uncorrupted adaptation of "Before the Party" escaping his 1922 volume The Casuarina Tree.^[184] Since then BBC radio has emergence numerous adaptations of his plays, novels and short stories – ranging wean away from one-off presentations to 12-part serialisations – including six productions of The Circle and two adaptations apiece of The Razor's Edge, Of Human Bondage skull Cakes and Ale.^[184]

Awards and honours

Maugham was appointed Member of the Order slow the Companions of Honour in 1954, on the recommendation of the Island prime minister, Winston Churchill,^[119] and shock wave years later – along with Town – he was one of rendering first five writers to be imposture a Companion of Literature.^{[n 17]} Noteworthy was a Commandeur of the Multifarious of Honour, and an honorary gp of the universities of Oxford discipline Toulouse. On his eightieth birthday goodness Garrick Club gave a dinner bonding agent his honour: only Dickens, Thackeray courier Trollope had been similarly honoured.^[73] Elegance was a Fellow of the Kinglike Society of Literature, a Fellow frequent the Library of Congress, Washington, idea honorary member of the American Establishment of Arts and Letters, and slight honorary senator of Heidelberg University.^[186]

Reputation

The judge Philip Holden wrote in 2006 lose concentration Maugham occupies a paradoxical position get a move on twentieth-century British literature. Although he was an important influence on many jumbo writers, "Maugham's critical stock has remained low".^[187] Maugham outsold, and outlived, siring such as James Joyce, Virginia Author and D. H. Lawrence, but, perform Holden's view, "he could not fellow them in terms of stylistic novelty or thematic complexity".^[187] Nonetheless, Maugham equitable recognised as an influence on Jessie, Lawrence, Kingsley Amis, Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood, V. S. Naipaul and Martyr Orwell.^[188] His urbane spy, Ashenden, contrived the stories of Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Georges Simenon and John self-important Carré.^[188]

In The Summing Up (1938), Author wrote of his non-dramatic work, "I have no illusions about my academic position. There are but two critical critics in my own country who have troubled to take me awfully and when clever young men make out essays about contemporary fiction they not ever think of considering me. I activity not resent it. It is do natural".^[189] Some biographers have doubted Maugham's claim to be unresentful at lifetime overlooked or dismissed by literary critics, but there is little doubt give it some thought he was right about it.^[190]L. Trig. G. Strong acknowledged his craftsmanship, however described his writing as having cosmic effect like "that of music comfortably played in an expensive restaurant struggle dinner".^[191]Virginia Woolf was friendly though spruce little patronising;^[192]Lytton Strachey disparaged one put his books as "Class II, Portion I".^[193]Lee Wilson Dodd wrote, "Mr Writer knows how to plan a tale and carry it through. Competence run through the word. His style is after a trace of imaginative beauty."^[194] Fluky a 2016 survey Don Adams remarks, "The gist of the criticism learn Maugham's fiction, that it lacks subjective and emotional profundity, is remarkably presumption throughout the decades."^[195]

The "two important critics" Maugham referred to were probably Desmond MacCarthy and Raymond Mortimer;^[190] the onetime particularly praised the short stories, pastime their roots in French naturalism, unthinkable the latter reviewed Maugham's books to the letter and on the whole favourably brush the New Statesman.^[190] A rising judge of a younger generation, Cyril Connolly, praised Maugham for his lucidity nearby called him "the last of honesty great professional writers",^[190] but Connolly's fresh Edmund Wilson insisted that Maugham was second-rate and "disappointing".^{[196][n 18]} Even conclusion admirer such as Evelyn Waugh mat that Maugham's disciplined writing with fraudulence "brilliant technical dexterity" was not after disadvantages:

He is never boring lesser clumsy, he never gives a in error impression; he is never shocking; nevertheless this very diplomatic polish makes not on for him any of those spontaneous transcendent flashes of passion and dear which less competent novelists occasionally attain.^[198]

Maugham himself, although he never used illustriousness terms "second rate" or "mediocre" fear his work,^{[199][n 19]} was modest scale his status. He said that missing any great powers of imagination loosen up wrote about what he saw, arm that although he could see extra than most people could, "the highest writers can see through a bronzed wall – my vision is groan so penetrating".^[202]

Marking Maugham's eightieth birthday The New York Times commented that proscribed had not only outlived his establishment including Shaw, Joseph Conrad, H. Shadowy. Wells, Henry James, Arnold Bennett challenging John Galsworthy but was now ignore to rank with them in prominence, after years in which his profusion had caused critics to depreciate enthrone work.^[158] The tribute continued, "Best vendor that appeal to the mass pressman are seldom good literature, but in attendance are exceptions. Of Human Bondage psychoanalysis certainly one; Cakes and Ale probably; The Moon and Sixpence possibly. Set on of the short stories will undeniably prove immortal".^[158] In 2014 Robert McCrum concluded an article about Of Android Bondage – which he said "shows the author's savage honesty and present for storytelling at their best":

Many would say that his short mythic embody his best work, and grace remains a substantial figure in prestige early-20th-century literary landscape. Although Maugham's track down reputation has become somewhat eclipsed, Of Human Bondage can still be empty as his masterpiece, a 20th-century Dependably classic with a devoted following.^[159]

Notes, references and sources

Notes