William Somerset Maugham

Notable Works

• Of Human Bondage (1915)
• The Circle (1921)
• The Painted Veil (1925)
• The Constant Wife (1926)
• The Sacred Flame (1928)
• Cakes and Ale (1930)

About

William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris. His mother, Edith Mary, had grown up in France, and his solicitor father, Robert Maugham, handled the legal affairs of the British Embassy. He disliked his middle name and was known by family and friends as “Willie”. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight and Maugham went to live with his uncle Henry Maugham, vicar of Whitstable. He developed a stammer and was bullied at King’s School, Canterbury for his poor English (French was his first language), stammer, short stature and lack of interest in sport. A legacy from his father enabled him to go aged 16 to Heidelberg University to study literature. Here, he had his first relationship with an Englishman ten years his senior who encouraged his ambitions to be a writer. Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of fifteen but dared not tell his Uncle, who also ruled out civil service as no longer a career for gentlemen since reforms required applicants to pass an exam. The Whitstable physician suggested medicine, and from 1892-1897, Maugham studied at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in Lambeth, writing that, “I was in contact with what I most wanted, life in the raw.”

His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), drew on his experience. Maugham’s debut novel attracted both comparisons to Zola and criticism of its subject matter, but it was as a playwright he achieved celebrity. By 1908, he had four plays in London’s West End. He wrote at least one play a year until 1933, mostly comedies, which ran successfully in the West End and on Broadway.  His stage successes never distracted him from writing novels, including Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor’s Edge (1944), as well as collections of short stories, many of which were adapted for radio, cinema and television. Maugham gave up writing novels shortly after WWII.

Although homosexual, he married Syrie Wellcome in 1917 after a three-year affair which produced their daughter, Liza. Their marriage lasted twelve years, but Maugham’s principal partner throughout was Gerald Haxton, with whom he travelled widely and lived together in the French Riviera. After Haxton died in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham’s secretary-companion for the rest of the author’s life.  He was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1954, on the recommendation of Winston Churchill and made a Companion of Literature six years later along with Churchill. He was a Commandeur of the Legion of Honour and honorary doctor of Oxford and Toulouse Universities. On his eightieth birthday, the Garrick Club gave him a dinner in his honour; only Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope were similarly honoured. He was a Fellow of the RSL, the Washington Library of Congress, an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an honorary senator of Heidelberg University.

Legacy

His gift of Royalties from his literary estate enables the RLF to support future generations of writers.