By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He was selected by Sir William Wiseman of British Intelligence to go to Russia, where the overthrow of the monarchy threatened to lead to a Russian withdrawal from the war. [56] The New York World described the romantic obsession of the protagonist as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". [5][n 6], After the birth of his daughter, Maugham moved to Switzerland. 'Mr. Know-All' is a heart-rending story of a big talker who saved the marriage of a modest woman. Sisllys 1 Henkilhistoria 2 Kirjallinen tuotanto 2.1 Suomennetut teokset As a result, he developed a talent for applying a wounding remark to those who displeased him. Peaches were not in season then. Two days later his ashes were interred in the grounds of The King's School, Canterbury, beside the wall of the Maugham Library, which he had endowed in 1961. He was acquitted, but was nonetheless registered as an "undesirable alien". Actually it has extremely complicated things to say about them, but its most important message may be that actions have real consequences, no matter how casually those actions may be taken". He drew upon his experiences as an obstetrician in his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), and its success, though small, encouraged him to abandon medicine. 245246. He published seventy-eight books -- including the undisputed classics Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge -- which sold over 40 million copies in his lifetime. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. An instinctive and magnificent storyteller, Somerset Maugham was one of the most popular and successful writers of his time. [158] In 2014 Robert McCrum concluded an article about Of Human Bondage which he said "shows the author's savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best": The hero, Philip Carey, suffers the same childhood misfortunes as Maugham himself: the loss of his mother, the breakup of his family home, and his emotionally straitened upbringing by elderly relatives. March 14, 2004. [34] He based himself in Seville, where he grew a moustache, smoked cigars, took lessons in the guitar,[34] and developed a passion for "a young thing with green eyes and a gay smile"[35] (gender carefully unspecified, as Hastings comments). Maugham is a British writer of great repute and has had one of the most successful literary careers in the twentieth century. Morgan describes him: Maugham's biographers have differed considerably about Searle's character and his influence for better or worse on his employer. Synonyms for Somerset Maugham in Free Thesaurus. [175], In Calder's view Maugham's "ability to tell a fascinating story and his dramatic skill" appealed strongly to the makers of films and radio programmes, but his liberal attitudes, disregard of conventional morality and unsentimental view of humanity led adapters to make his stories "blander, safer, and more narrowly moralistic than he had ever conceived them". This is a social-psychological novel that reveals the problem of relations between men and women in bourgeois society, depicts the psychological portraits of characters, and describes their feelings, emotions and thoughts as well. W. Somerset Maugham. His work was popular for his simple style of writing, as well as his sharp and accurate understanding and judgment of human nature. Somerset Maugham. He died at the age of 91. He was one of the most reputed and well-known . Maugham died in the Anglo-American Hospital in Nice on the night of 1516 December 1965 at the age of 91, of complications following a fall. [1] Maugham trained as a medical doctor at St. Thomas's hospital's medical school, London, but then decided to become a full-time writer. [116] He did the same on American television, introducing the Somerset Maugham Theater series, which a reviewer said enjoyed "tremendous popularity and has won for him an audience of millions of enthusiastic fans". And in one way or another however indirectly all I've written during the last twenty years has something to do with him".[109]. [36], The Making of a Saint, a historical novel, attracted less attention than Liza of Lambeth and its sales were unremarkable. She was married to the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, but the couple had formally separated in 1909, after which she had a succession of partners, including the retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge. In a 2004 biography of Maugham, Jeffrey Meyers comments, "His stammer, a psychological and physical handicap, and his gradual awareness of his homosexuality made him furtive and secretive". I knew too a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation, absent-mindedly took one. Under 1. verdenskrig var han hemmelig agent i Rusland; hans spionroman Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928; "Ashenden: Den hemmelige agent") bygger p denne erfaring. By the early 1930s Maugham had grown tired of the theatre. "Rain" (1921) by W. Somerset Maugham is a fish-out-of-water story, in which characters wholly unsuited to their environment become marooned somewhere due to external circumstances. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. W. Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) first claimed fame as a playwright and novelist, but he became best known in the 1920's and 1930's the world over as an international traveler and short-story writer. [54], Maugham proofread Of Human Bondage at Malo-les-Bains, near Dunkirk, during a lull in his ambulance duties. She has often played with fellow Fortnite gamer, Clix. [84] By 1925, Maugham, learning that his wife was spreading scandal about his private life and had taken lovers of her own, was reconsidering his future. [147] Other London productions have included The Circle (1976), For Services Rendered (1993), The Constant Wife (2000) and Home and Beauty (2002). In the US they spent time in Hollywood, which Maugham despised from the first, but found highly remunerative. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. Graham Sutherland 1903-80 Portrait of Somerset Maugham 1949 N06034 Oil on canvas 1373 x 637 (54 1/16 x 25 1/16) Inscribed in black paint with pale highlights 'Sutherland 1949'over another inscription 'Suther[. [56] The tide of opinion was turned by the influential American novelist and critic Theodore Dreiser, who called Maugham a great artist and the book a work of genius, of the utmost importance, comparable to a Beethoven symphony. "Mr. Maugham Himself". [n 10] When the Second World War began in 1939 he stayed in his home as long as he could, but in June 1940 France surrendered; knowing himself to be proscribed by the Nazis (Goebbels denounced him personally) Maugham made his way to England in uncomfortable conditions on a coal freighter from Nice. [146] In London, the National Theatre has presented two Maugham plays since its inception in 1963: Home and Beauty in 1968 and For Services Rendered in 1979. Maugham, who had been writing steadily since he was 15, intended to make his career as an author, but he dared not tell his guardian. Support your answer with examples from the story. In Somerset Maugham's novel "The Moon and Sixpence," there is a scene in which Dirk Stroeve, a painter, visits an art dealer to inquire after the work of . [73] He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Library of Congress, Washington, an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an honorary senator of Heidelberg University. The British colonies there failed to provide him with anything like the material he had gathered in the Asian outposts in the 1920s, but the French penal settlement on Devil's Island furnished him with some stories. Who Is W. Somerset Maugham's Wife? Culture; Somerset Maugham; Reuse this content. [78] He spent much time travelling with Haxton. [5] He attempted to disinherit his daughter and to make Searle his adopted son, but the courts prevented it.[124]. "Mr Somerset Maugham's Library for School", Lyttelton and Hart-Davis (1984), pp. ENVOI William Somerset Maugham 25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. [n 13] He was cremated in Marseille on 20 December. It was an amusing book to write. He qualified as a doctor in 1897, but pursued his passion for writing following the publication of his . Most viewed. [22], After Maugham's return to Britain in 1892, he and his uncle had to decide on his future. the son of a tailor, he dropped his aitches like one of the characters in, Winter and spring at the Mauresque, a few weeks of foreign travel (Austria, Italy, Spain) with a stay at a spa (, Maugham, the disbeliever in ecclesiastical ritual, was buried without ritual but on hallowed ground. [87] His longest-running play of the decade, and of his whole career, was Our Betters. [21] Brooks encouraged Maugham's ambitions to be a writer and introduced him to the works of Schopenhauer and Spinoza. [1] [193] Lee Wilson Dodd wrote, "Mr Maugham knows how to plan a story and carry it through. Corrections? He returned to Britain and spent three months in a sanatorium in Scotland. Like Of Human Bondage it has a strong female character at its centre, but the two are polar opposites: the malign Mildred in the earlier novel contrasts with the lovable, and much loved, Rosie in Cakes and Ale. [160], The stories range from the short sketches of On a Chinese Screen, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to many, mostly serious, short stories dealing with the lives of British and other colonial expatriates in the Pacific Islands and Asia. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage a book with a large autobiographical element as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard. [186], The critic Philip Holden wrote in 2006 that Maugham occupies a paradoxical position in twentieth-century British literature. Somerset Maugham . 00:00. In 1940, W Somerset Maugham was forced to flee France as the Nazis invaded. Maugham's novels after Liza of 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). [25] The local physician in Whitstable suggested the medical profession, and Maugham's uncle agreed. He did not wish to follow his brothers to Cambridge University,[23] and his stammer precluded a career in the church or the law even if either had attracted him. His fellow author Cyril Connolly wrote, "there will remain a story-teller's world from Singapore to the Marquesas that is exclusively and forever Maugham". He achieved fame initially as a dramatist with plays such as Lady Frederick (1912) and The Circle (1921). For the next year and a half he studied literature, philosophy and German. [50], By 1914 Maugham was famous, with thirteen plays and eight novels completed. He was plump rather than stout. [106], Haxton was holding down a responsible job in Washington and enjoying his new independence and self-reliance. There are nineteen in all, of which those most often mentioned by critics are Liza of Lambeth, Of Human Bondage, The Painted Veil, Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence and The Razor's Edge. His American publishers estimated that four and a half million copies of his books were bought in the US during his lifetime.[127]. [91] Hastings quotes a contemporary's view that Kear was Maugham's revenge on Walpole for "a stolen boyfriend, an unrequited love and an old canker of jealousy".[90]. The first volume, Orientations, came out in 1898 and his last, Creatures of Circumstance, in 1947, with seven others between the two. William Somerset Maugham ( Prizs, 1874. janur 25. W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage) " If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers. Maugham's mother Edith Mary Snell had tuberculosis, and died of the disease when he was eight; his father died two years later, of cancer. She began posting to Twitch in June 2019. Appearing in popular magazines such as Nash's, Collier's, Hearst's International, The Smart Set, and Cosmopolitan, his stories About. W. Somerset Maugham. The W. Somerset Maugham Collection features: The Moon And Sixpence Of Human Bondage His supernatural thriller The Magician (1908) had a principal character modelled on Aleister Crowley, a well-known occultist. Maugham also travelled far and wide to Europe, North America, the Far East, the South seas and beyond. [183] On radio, the BBC's connection with Maugham goes back to 1930, when Hermione Gingold and Richard Goolden starred in an adaptation of "Before the Party" from his 1922 volume The Casuarina Tree. Maughams plays, mainly Edwardian social comedies, soon became dated, but his short stories have increased in popularity. MR. KNOW-ALL / Somerset Maugham () Bridging Text and Context: Write 80 - 100 words. The Razor's Edge by W Somerset Maugham (Bill Murray Cover) (Paperback, Fiction) 1984. [5] This book, described by Raphael as "an elegant piece of literary malice",[73] is a satire on the literary world and a humorously cynical observation of human mating. [177] In the first screen version of Rain (1928) expurgations fundamentally altered the characters;[178] an adaptation of "The Facts of Life" in the 1948 omnibus film Quartet omitted the key plot point that the scheming young woman on whom the young hero turns the tables is a prostitute with whom he has just spent a night;[179] in "The Ant and the Grasshopper" a young adventurer marries not a rich old woman who dies soon afterwards but a rich young one who remains very much alive. [5] Nevertheless he had a wish to marry, which he later greatly regretted. Mary Elizabeth Maugham. Maugham's alienation started in childhood. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. [5][57] Bryan Connon comments in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "After this it seemed that Maugham could not fail, and the public eagerly bought his novels [and] volumes of his carefully crafted short stories". They visited the Far East together in 191920, keeping Maugham away from home for six months. Illustration by Edward Sorel. [20] A modest legacy from his father enabled him to go to Heidelberg University to study. In the post-war era, Maugham settled into a pattern of life that changed little from year to year: In 1959 the foreign travel included a final trip to the far East. He traveled in Spain and Italy and in 1908 achieved a theatrical triumphfour plays running in London at oncethat brought him financial security. [96], Maugham's days of lengthy trips to distant places were mostly behind him, but at Kipling's suggestion he sailed to the West Indies in 1936. It is high time for them then to retire. After all, he has only one life. [188], In The Summing Up (1938), Maugham wrote of his non-dramatic work, "I have no illusions about my literary position. [178], Radio and television adaptations have, in general, been more faithful to Maugham's original stories. William Somerset Maugham [n 2] CH ( / mm / MAWM; 25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) [n 1] was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. When W. SOMERSET MAUGH AM was asked to select and edit the ten best novels in world literature, he thought at once of Balzac. [110] He came from Bermondsey, a poor district of London. 1965. Many of his works were highly praised: the novels Of Human Bondage , Cakes and Ale , The Razor's Edge , and The Moon and Sixpence ; short stories such as "Rain" and "The Outstation"; and his plays Lady . Presented by Lady John Hope 1951 Provenance: Commissioned by Somerset Maugham 1949 and given by him to his daughter, Lady Joan Hope Exhibited: Graham Sutherland 1924-51 . [99], Throughout the decade Maugham, with Haxton in attendance, lived and entertained lavishly at his house on Cap Ferrat, the Villa La Mauresque. William Somerset Maugham [mm] ( 25. tammikuuta 1874 Pariisi, Ranska - 16. joulukuuta 1965 Nizza, Ranska) oli englantilainen nytelmkirjailija, kirjailija ja novellisti, 1930-luvun tunnetuimpia lnsimaisia kirjailijoita ja tiettvsti mys suurituloisimpia. [19] He left as soon as he could, although he later developed an affection for the school, and became a generous benefactor. He had a slight limp, and he walked slowly, leant on a stick. 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