W. Somerset Maugham

2022-01-04T18:10:33Z

2A0D:6FC0:1920:5200:39FB:1955:D080:268C:

{{Short description|English playwright and writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{Use British English|date=December 2015}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = W. Somerset Maugham
| honorific_suffix = {{postnom|country=GBR|size=100|CH}}
| image = Maugham_retouched.jpg
| caption = Maugham photographed by [[Carl Van Vechten]] in 1934
| birth_date = {{birth date|1874|01|25|df=y}}
| birth_name = William Somerset Maugham
| birth_place = [[Paris]], France
| death_date = {{death date and age|1965|12|16|1874|01|25|df=y}}
| death_place = [[Nice]], [[Alpes-Maritimes]], France
| education = [[The King's School, Canterbury]]
| alma_mater = {{ubl|[[Heidelberg University]]|[[St Thomas's Hospital Medical School]]}}
| occupation = Playwright, novelist, short-story writer
| spouse = {{marriage|[[Syrie Maugham|Syrie Wellcome]]|1917|1929|end=divorced}}
| children = [[Elizabeth Hope, Baroness Glendevon|Mary Elizabeth Wellcome]] (denied paternity)
| language = English
| notable_works = ''[[Of Human Bondage]]''<br> ''[[The Moon and Sixpence]]''<br> ''[[The Razor's Edge]]''<br>''[[The Painted Veil (novel)|The Painted Veil]]<br>"[[Rain (short story)|Rain]]"
| years_active = 1897–1964
|signature=W. Somerset Maugham signature.svg
}}

'''William Somerset Maugham'''{{efn|During his lifetime, Maugham's name was most frequently given as "'''W. Somerset Maugham'''" in publications of his works, and this seems to be the name he preferred to use professionally. However, at times he also has been referred to as "'''Somerset Maugham'''", omitting the "W." initial–– for example, the [[Somerset Maugham Award]] that is given out by the [[Society of Authors]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.societyofauthors.org/somerset-maugham|title=The Somerset Maugham Awards|publisher=The Society of Authors|access-date=24 May 2021}}</ref>}} {{postnom|country=GBR|size=100%|CH}} ({{IPAc-en|m|ɔː|m}} {{respell|MAWM}}; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965)<ref>{{Cite web|title=Maugham, (William) Somerset, (25 Jan. 1874–16 Dec. 1965), Fellow Library of Congress, Washington; Hon. Mem. National Society of Arts and Letters, USA; Hon. Senator of Heidelberg University, 1961|url=https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/10.1093/ww/9780199540891.001.0001/ww-9780199540884-e-48724|access-date=2021-06-13|website=WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO|year=2007|language=en|doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u48724|isbn=978-0-19-954089-1}}</ref> was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.<ref>[http://www.online-literature.com/maugham/ "W. Somerset Maugham"], The Literature Network.</ref>

Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and the orphaned boy was raised in [[Whitstable]], [[Kent]] by a paternal uncle, who was emotionally cold.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shaffer |first1=Brian. W. |title=The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, 3 Volume Set |date=2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |page=246}}</ref> He did not want to become a lawyer like other men in his family, so he trained and qualified as a physician. His first novel ''[[Liza of Lambeth]]'' (1897) sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. In 1915 he wrote ''[[Of Human Bondage]]'', widely considered his masterpiece.

During the First World War, he served with the [[Red Cross]] and in the ambulance corps before being recruited in 1916 into the British [[Secret Intelligence Service]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|date=17 December 1965|title=Mr. Somerset Maugham|page=17|work=[[The Times]]|issue=56507}}</ref> He worked for the service in Switzerland and Russia before the [[October Revolution]] of 1917 in the Russian Empire. During and after the war, he travelled in India, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He drew from those experiences in his later short stories and novels.

==Childhood and education==
Maugham was the fourth of six sons born in his family. His father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer and handled the legal affairs of the [[Embassy of the United Kingdom, Paris|British Embassy in Paris]].<ref name="maugham1">Maugham, Somerset 1962.</ref> Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, Maugham's father arranged for him to be born at the embassy, diplomatically considered British soil.<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 4.</ref> His grandfather, another Robert, was a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the [[Law Society of England and Wales]].<ref>Maugham, Robin 1977.</ref> Maugham refers to this grandfather's writings in chapter 6 of his literary memoir ''[[The Summing Up]]'':<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AmQUAAAAQAAJ&q=outlines+of+character |title=Outlines of character, the great character, the English character [&c.] by a member of the Philomathic institution |last=Outlines |date=1823 |language=en}}</ref>

{{Quote|...in the catalogue of the Library at the British Museum there is a long list of his legal works. He wrote only one book that was not of this character. It was a collection of essays that he had contributed to the solid magazines of the day and he issued it, as became his sense of decorum, anonymously. I once had the book in my hands, a handsome volume bound in calf, but I never read it and I have not been able to get hold of a copy since. I wish I had, for I might have learnt from it something of the kind of man he was.}}

His family assumed that Maugham and his brothers would be lawyers. His elder brother, [[Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham|Viscount Maugham]], did become a lawyer, enjoying a distinguished legal career and serving as [[Lord Chancellor]] from 1938 to 1939.

Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), contracted [[tuberculosis]], a condition for which her physician prescribed childbirth.{{sfn|Hastings|2010}} She had Maugham several years after the last of his three elder brothers was born. By the time Maugham was three, his older brothers were all away at boarding school.

Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth. It was Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died of tuberculosis six days later on 31 January at the age of 41.<ref>Meyers, 2004, p. 11.</ref> The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized. He kept his mother's photograph at his bedside for the rest of his life.<ref>Morgan, 1980, pp. 8–9.</ref> Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died in France of cancer.

Maugham was sent back to the UK to be cared for by his paternal uncle Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of [[Whitstable]], in Kent. The boy attended [[The King's School, Canterbury]], which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. Maugham developed a [[Stuttering|stammer]] that stayed with him all his life. It was sporadic, being subject to his moods and circumstances.<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 17.</ref> Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters.

At age 16, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at [[Heidelberg University]]. During his year in Heidelberg, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with [[John Ellingham Brooks]], an Englishman ten years his senior.<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 24.</ref> He also wrote his first book there, a biography of [[Giacomo Meyerbeer]], an [[opera]] composer.<ref>Epstein, 1991, p. 189.</ref>

After Maugham's return to Britain, his uncle found him a position in an accountant's office. After a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle tried to find Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were distinguished lawyers, but Maugham was not interested in this profession. He rejected a career in the Church because of his stutter. His uncle rejected the Civil Service, believing that it was no longer a career for gentlemen after a new law requiring applicants to pass an entrance examination. The local physician suggested the medical profession, and Maugham's uncle agreed.

Maugham had been writing steadily since he was 15 and wanted to be an author, but he did not tell his guardian. For the next five years, he studied medicine at [[St Thomas's Hospital Medical School]] in [[Lambeth]].

==Career==

===Early works===
[[File:Maugham facing camera.jpg|thumb|upright|W. Somerset Maugham]]
Maugham was living in London, meeting people of a "low" sort, whom he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief..."<ref name="Summing Up">{{cite book |last=Maugham |first=Somerset |title=[[The Summing Up]] |year=1938 |publisher=William Heinemann |location=London}}</ref>

Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly, while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he published his first novel, ''[[Liza of Lambeth]]'', a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing [[midwifery]] work in [[Lambeth]], a South London slum. Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "... it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue".<ref>Maugham, ''Liza of Lambeth'' (Rockville, MD: Serenity Publishers, 2008), p. 10.</ref>

''Liza of Lambeth''{{'}}s first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham, who had qualified as a medic, dropped medicine and embarked on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He later said: "I took to it as a duck takes to water."<ref>Maugham, ''The Partial View'' (Heineman 1954), p. 8.</ref>

The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and to live in places such as Spain and [[Capri]] for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of ''Liza''. This changed in 1907 with the success of his play ''[[Lady Frederick]]''. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.

Maugham's supernatural thriller ''[[The Magician (Maugham novel)|The Magician]]'' (1908) based its principal character on the well-known and somewhat disreputable [[Aleister Crowley]]. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. He wrote a critique of the novel, charging Maugham with plagiarism, in a review published in ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]''.<ref>Crowley's ''Vanity Fair'' review is reprinted in Anthony Curtis and John Whitehead, eds., ''W. Somerset Maugham The Critical Heritage'' (Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1987), pp. 44–56.</ref> Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.

===Popular success, 1914–1939===
By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when the First World War broke out, he served in France as a member of the [[British Red Cross]]'s so-called "[[List of ambulance drivers during World War I#Writers|Literary Ambulance Drivers]]", a group of 24 well-known writers, including the Americans [[John Dos Passos]], [[E. E. Cummings]], and [[Ernest Hemingway]].
[[File:Maugham early career.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Maugham early in his career]]

During this time he met [[Gerald Haxton|Frederick Gerald Haxton]], a young [[San Francisco, California|San Franciscan]], who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944.<ref>Haxton appears as Tony Paxton in Maugham's 1917 play ''Our Betters''.</ref><ref name=":0" /> Throughout this period, Maugham continued to write. He proofread ''[[Of Human Bondage]]'' at a location near [[Dunkirk]] during a lull in his ambulance duties.<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 188.</ref>

''[[Of Human Bondage]]'' (1915) initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the ''[[New York World]]'' described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential American novelist and critic [[Theodore Dreiser]] rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] symphony. His review gave the book a lift, and it has never been out of print since.<ref>Morgan, 1980, pp. 197–198.</ref>

Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in [[Baruch Spinoza]]'s ''Ethics'':<ref>Ruth Franklin, "The Great and the Good", ''The New Yorker'', 31 May 2010, retrieved 6 September 2012.</ref>
{{Quote|
The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master ... so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he see the better before him.
}}

''Of Human Bondage'' is considered to have many autobiographical elements. Maugham gave Philip Carey a club foot (rather than his stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of Whitstable; and Carey is a medic. Maugham insisted that the book was more invention than fact. The close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark. He wrote in 1938: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."<ref name="Summing Up"/>

==Marriage and family==
Maugham entered into a relationship with [[Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo|Syrie Wellcome]], the wife of [[Henry Wellcome]], an American-born English pharmaceutical magnate. They had a daughter named [[Mary Elizabeth Maugham|Mary Elizabeth]] (1915–1998).<ref>Her birth name is recorded as Mary Elizabeth Wellcome in the immigration and naturalization files of [[Ellis Island]], along with her mother, who is listed as Syrie Wellcome, on the 21 July 1916 manifest of HMS ''Baltic''.</ref> Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.<ref name="wellcome">{{cite web | title=Syrie and Mounteney Wellcome | author=Bailey, Penny | work=Wellcome Trust | url=http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/History/WTX052197.htm | access-date=2013-11-11 }}</ref>

In May 1917, following the ''[[decree absolute]]'', Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married. Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator, who in the 1920s popularized "the all-white room". They changed their daughter's surname, originally registered as Wellcome and reflecting Syrie's marriage. She was familiarly called Liza, and her surname was changed to Maugham.

The marriage was unhappy, and the couple separated. In his 1962 memoir ''Looking Back'', Maugham denied paternity of Liza. Around the same time, he attempted to have her disinherited in order to adopt his male secretary Alan Searle<ref>Selina Hastings, ''The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham'', p. 344</ref>
, suggesting that Liza was actually fathered by either Henry Wellcome, [[Gordon Selfridge]] or an unknown lover. The subsequent 21-month court case, fought in British and French courts, determined that Maugham was her biological father, and the author was legally barred from his adoption plans. She was awarded approximately $1,400,000 in damages, comprising $280,000 in a cash settlement to compensate her for paintings originally willed to her, along with royalties to some of his books, and the [[controlling interest]] in his French villa.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930095836/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897089,00.html Somerset Maugham is Liza's father], TIME.com; accessed 21 February 2016.</ref>

Maugham later lived in the French Riviera with his partner Gerald Haxton until Haxton's death in 1944. He next lived with Alan Searle until his own death in 1965.{{sfn|Hastings|2010}}

===Sexuality===
Maugham has been described both as bisexual{{sfn|Hastings|2010|p=39}}{{sfn|Meyers|2010|p=86}}{{incomplete short citation|date=May 2021}}{{sfn|Klein|2014|p=142}} and as homosexual.<ref name="HumanBondageCalderIntro">{{cite book | title = Of Human Bondage | last1 = Maugham | first1 = W. Somerset | contribution = introduction | contributor1-last = Calder | contributor1-first = Robert | page = x | quote = Francis King argues that Philip's clubfoot was ‘a metaphor for a graver disability than the stammer that most critics have assumed it to have been’: that is, his homosexuality. | year = 1992 | publisher = Penguin | isbn = 9780140185225 | url = https://archive.org/details/ofhumanbondage00maug_2 }}</ref> In addition to his 13-year marriage to Syrie Wellcome, he had affairs with other women in his youth.<ref>{{harvnb|Klein|2014|p=142}}: "By the time he fell in love with an actress (identified only by the first name of Nan) he was financially independent. ... He was in love with her for eight years."</ref>

In later life Maugham was exclusively homosexual and lived successively with two men.<ref name="Tamagne">{{cite book | title = A History of Homosexuality in Europe | volume = 1 | last1 = Tamagne | first1 = Florence | page = 229 | publisher = Algora Publishing | year = 2004 | isbn = 9780875861999 |quote = From 1920 on, Maugham was exclusively homosexual. }}</ref> Frequently quoted in this connection is Maugham's statement to his nephew Robin:

{{Quote|I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer—whereas really it was the other way around.
|author=W. Somerset Maugham
|source={{harv|Maugham, Robin|1970}}, quoted in {{harvnb|Hastings|2010|p=39}}
}}

==Religious views==
Maugham said that he remained [[agnostic]] to the questions concerning the existence of God.<ref>“I remain an agnostic, and the practical outcome of agnosticism is that you act as though God did not exist”, Maugham wrote in his memoir ''The Summing Up'' (1938).</ref><ref>"In ''The Summing Up'' (1938) and ''A Writer's Notebook'' (1949) Maugham explains his philosophy of life as a resigned [[atheism]] and a certain [[skepticism]] about the extent of man's innate goodness and intelligence; it is this that gives his work its astringent cynicism." 'Maugham, W. Somerset', ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', accessed 16 August 2017.</ref> He considered that the [[problem of evil|misery and bitterness]] of the world suggested that God did not exist.<ref>“I'm glad I don't believe in God. When I look at the misery of the world and its bitterness I think that no belief can be more ignoble.” – ''A Writer's Notebook'', 1949.</ref> He said that "the evidence adduced to prove the truth of one religion is of very much the same sort as that adduced to prove the truth of another".<ref>“The evidence adduced to prove the truth of one religion is of very much the same sort as that adduced to prove the truth of another. I wonder if that does not make the Christian uneasy to reflect that if he had been in [[Morocco]] he would have been a [[Mahometan]], if in [[Sri Lanka|Ceylon]] a [[Buddhist]]; and in that case [[Christianity]] would have seemed to him as absurd and obviously untrue as those religions seem to the Christian.” D. 1965.</ref>

Maugham did not believe in God or an afterlife. He considered notions of future punishment or reward to be outrageous.<ref>“I do not believe in God. I see no need of such idea. It is incredible to me that there should be an after-life. I find the notion of future punishment outrageous and of future reward extravagant. I am convinced that when I die, I shall cease entirely to live; I shall return to the earth I came from.” — W. Somerset Maugham, ''A Writer’s Notebook'' (1949).</ref>

==Intelligence work==
Maugham returned to Britain from his ambulance unit duties in order to promote ''Of Human Bondage''. With that completed, he was eager to assist the war effort again. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high-ranking intelligence officer known as "R"; he was recruited by [[John Wallinger]].<ref name=Popplewell230>{{Harvnb|Popplewell|1995|p=230}}.</ref> In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland, as one of the network of British agents who operated against the [[Berlin Committee]], whose members included [[Virendranath Chattopadhyay]], an Indian revolutionary trying to resist colonial Britain's rule of India. Maugham lived in Switzerland as a writer.

In June 1917, Maugham was asked by Sir [[William G. E. Wiseman|William Wiseman]], an officer of the British [[Secret Intelligence Service]] (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="Popplewell230"/><ref name = "Morgan 1980 p227">Morgan, 1980, p. 227.</ref> It was part of an attempt to keep the [[Russian Provisional Government|Provisional Government]] in power and Russia in the war, by countering German pacifist propaganda.<ref name = "Morgan 1980 p226">Morgan, 1980, p. 226.</ref> Two and a half months later, the [[Bolsheviks]] took control. Maugham subsequently said that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed that he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgment and the ability to avoid being deceived by facile appearances.<ref name="Popplewell230"/><ref name=Woods55>{{Harvnb|Woods|2007|p=55}}.</ref>

Maugham used his spying experiences as the basis for ''[[Ashenden: Or the British Agent]]'', a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy. This character is considered to have influenced [[Ian Fleming]]'s later series of ''[[James Bond]]'' novels.<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 206.</ref> In 1922, Maugham dedicated his book ''On A Chinese Screen'' to Syrie. This was a collection of 58 ultra-short story sketches, which he had written during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, intending to expand the sketches later as a book.<ref>Morgan, 1980, pp. 245, 264.</ref>

==Travels and writing==
In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel ''[[The Moon and Sixpence]]'', based on the life of [[Paul Gauguin]]. This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s that inspired his novels. He became known as a writer who portrayed the last days of European colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys, he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material which the author drew from for his fiction. In 1938, he visited the [[Hindu]] sage [[Ramana Maharishi]] at his [[Sri Ramana Ashram|ashram]] in [[India]], after whom he modeled the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel ''The Razor's Edge''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Prayer: A History |last=Zaleski |first=Philip |author2=Carol Zaleski |year=2006 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |isbn=0-618-77360-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SDHsE_Efy0EC&q=Sri+Ramana+Ashram&pg=PA219 |ref=Za }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title= Eastern promise|url=http://www.livemint.com/2008/05/17000630/Hidden-camera.html?d=1 |publisher=[[Mint (newspaper)|Mint]] |date=17 May 2008}}</ref>

Maugham's play ''[[The Letter (play)|The Letter]]'', starring [[Gladys Cooper]], had its premiere in London in 1927. Later, he asked that [[Katharine Cornell]] play the lead in the 1927 [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] version. He had adapted it for the stage from a story published in 1924 in [[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|Hearst's International]]; it was reprinted in his collection ''[[The Casuarina Tree]]'' (1926).

The play was adapted as a film [[The Letter (1929 film)|by the same name]] in 1929. [[Jeanne Eagels]] had the lead. A second film adaptation was released [[The Letter (1940 film)|in 1940]], starring American actress [[Bette Davis]], who was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance. In 1951, Katherine Cornell was a great success playing the lead in Maugham's comedy ''[[The Constant Wife]]''.<ref>Tad Mosel, ''Leading Lady: The World and Theatre of Katharine Cornell'', Little, Brown & Co., Boston (1978).</ref>{{page needed|date=March 2020}}

In 1926, Maugham bought the [[Villa La Mauresque]], on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) at [[Cap Ferrat]] on the [[French Riviera]]. It was his home for most of the rest of his life. There he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 1930s. He continued to be highly productive, writing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the [[Battle of France|collapse of France]] and its [[German occupation of France during World War II|occupation by the German Third Reich]] forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera, he was a refugee—but one of the wealthiest and most famous writers in the English-speaking world.{{citation needed|date=October 2014}}

Maugham's short fable ''An Appointment in [[Samarra]]'' (1933) is based on an ancient [[Babylonia]]n myth: Death is both the narrator and a central character.<ref>Baker, [http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english320/Maugham-AS.htm "Maugham's version of ''An Appointment in Samarra''"], Kansas State University.</ref><ref>An older version of ''An Appointment in Samarra'' is recorded in the ''Babylonian Talmud'', Sukkah 53a.</ref> The American writer [[John O'Hara]] credited Maugham's tale as the inspiration for the title of his novel ''[[Appointment in Samarra]]''.

==Grand old man of letters==
In his sixties, Maugham lived for most of the Second World War in the United States, first in [[Los Angeles]], where he worked on many screenplays, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations. He later lived in [[Southern United States|the South]]. While in the US before that country's entry into the war, he was asked by the British government to make patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. After his companion Gerald Haxton died in 1944, Maugham returned to England. In private, Maugham espoused [[antisemitic]] conspiracy theories about Jewish refugees, noting that "the [[Gestapo]] is known to have had spies among refugees, and these have not seldom been Jews".<ref>Kushner, Tony. ''The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War''. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1989, p. 117.</ref> After the war, in 1946 Maugham returned to his villa in France. He lived there until his death, with time away for frequent and long travels.

In that period, Maugham began a relationship with Alan Searle, whom he had first met in 1928. A younger man from the London slum area of [[Bermondsey]], Searle had previously embarked upon an affair with the writer [[Lytton Strachey]]. He proved a devoted (if not a stimulating) companion. He was a jocular character, always engaging but could be mischievous. One of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Haxton and Searle, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was ''vin ordinaire''."<ref>Morgan, 1980, p. 495.</ref>

Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed ... In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel."<ref name="Summing Up"/>

In 1962 Maugham sold a collection of paintings, some of which had already been assigned by deed to his daughter [[Mary Elizabeth Maugham|Liza]]. She sued her father and won a judgment of £230,000. Maugham publicly disowned her; by that time his mental health had deteriorated and been brought into question by his family. In order to break all ties, he claimed that Liza was not his biological daughter, and he adopted Searle as his son and heir, but the adoption was annulled. In his 1962 volume of memoirs ''Looking Back'', he attacked the late Syrie Maugham and wrote that Liza had been born before they married. The memoir cost him several friends and exposed him to much public ridicule. Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the French courts, and it was overturned.

But after Maugham's death, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of the Villa La Mauresque, Maugham's manuscripts, and his revenue from copyrights for 30 years. Thereafter the copyrights passed to the [[Royal Literary Fund]].

There is no grave for Maugham. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, [[The King's School, Canterbury]].<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 30808). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref> Liza Maugham, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by her four children (a son and a daughter by her first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon). Among her grandchildren is [[Derek Paravicini]], who is a musical prodigy and [[autistic savant]].<ref name="es">{{cite web |title=Camilla's nephew, the tortured musical genius |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/camillas-nephew-the-tortured-musical-genius-7176543.html |website=Evening Standard |access-date=6 April 2016 |date=7 April 2007}}</ref><ref name="dt">{{cite web |title=In the key of genius |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1529044/In-the-key-of-genius.html |website=Daily Telegraph |access-date=6 April 2016 |date=17 September 2006}}</ref>

==Achievements==
Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary, and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. In 1934 the American journalist and radio personality [[Alexander Woollcott]] offered Maugham some language advice: "The female ''implies'', and from that the male ''infers''." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn."<ref>{{cite book
| last =Hoyt
| first =Edwin P.
| title =Alexander Woollcott: The Man Who Came to Dinner
| publisher =Abelard-Schuman
| year =1968
| location =New York
| page =[https://archive.org/details/alexanderwoollco00hoyt/page/258 258]
| isbn =9780200715041
| url =https://archive.org/details/alexanderwoollco00hoyt
| url-access =registration
}}</ref>

Maugham wrote at a time when experimental [[modernist]] literature such as that of [[William Faulkner]], [[Thomas Mann]], [[James Joyce]] and [[Virginia Woolf]] was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticised as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way".<ref>[[Edmund Wilson]], quoted in [[Gore Vidal]], 1990, p. 10.</ref>

For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered a moral failing, as well as illegal) or whether he was trying to disguise his leanings, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist. In ''Don Fernando'', a non-fiction book about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful) suggestion that the painter [[El Greco]] was homosexual:<ref>''Don Fernando'' 1935, revised 1950, p. 141 of Mandarin edition of 1990.</ref>

{{Quote|It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him. Some at least of the broad and typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole... I cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this.}}

Maugham's public view of his abilities remained modest. Towards the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters".<ref>Anne Skillion, ed., ''The New York Public Library Literature Companion'' (NY: Free Press, 2001), p. 159.</ref> In 1948 he wrote ''Great Novelists and Their Novels'' (also known as ''Ten Novels and Their Authors'' and ''The Art of Fiction''), in which he listed the ten best novels of world literature in his view.<ref>{{cite web |author=David Wilson Taylor |url=http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/maughamstenbestnovels.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040227192112/http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/maughamstenbestnovels.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2004-02-27 |title=Somerset Maugham'S Ten Best Novels Of The World |publisher=Home.comcast.net |access-date=2014-08-05}}</ref>

Maugham was appointed a [[Companion of Honour]] in the [[1954 Birthday Honours]].

Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War; he continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the [[Garrick Club]].<ref>Mander & Mitchenson, 1980.</ref> In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre. From 1951, about 14 years before his death, his paintings began their exhibition life. In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.<ref name = "NT 1">{{cite web |url=http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=7207 |title=Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings |website=National Theatre |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120721095452/http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=7207 |archive-date=2012-07-21 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name = "NT 2">{{cite web |url=http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=7113 |title=Shakespeare Paintings |website=National Theatre |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120616072258/http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk:80/?lid=7113 |archive-date=2012-06-16 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Significant works==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2011}}
Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be ''[[Of Human Bondage]]'', a semi-autobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Philip's [[clubfoot]] causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality.<ref>Ted Morgan. Maugham: A Biography. Simon and Schuster, 1984. {{ISBN|978-0671505813}}.</ref>

Two of his later novels were based on historical people: ''[[The Moon and Sixpence]]'' is about the life of [[Paul Gauguin]], and ''[[Cakes and Ale]]'' contains what were taken as thinly veiled and unflattering characterisations of the authors [[Thomas Hardy]] (who had died two years previously) and [[Hugh Walpole]]. Maugham himself denied any intention of doing this in a long letter to Walpole:<ref name=Walpole>{{cite book |last=Hart-Davis |first=Rupert |title=Hugh Walpole |year=1985 |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |isbn=0-241-11406-3 |pages=316–317}}</ref> "I certainly never intended Alroy Kear to be a portrait of you. He is made up of a dozen people and the greater part of him is myself"—yet in an introduction written for the 1950 [[Modern Library]] edition of the work, he plainly states that Walpole was the inspiration for Kear (while denying that Thomas Hardy was the inspiration for the novelist Driffield). Maugham's last major novel, ''[[The Razor's Edge]]'' (1944), was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of the First World War, who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, travelling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and [[war-weariness]] struck a chord with readers during the Second World War. It was adapted into a [[The Razor's Edge (1946 film)|major motion picture]], released in 1946, starring Tyrone Power as Larry Darrell, with [[Herbert Marshall]] as W. Somerset Maugham. Another film adaptation was issued in [[The Razor's Edge (1984 film)|1984]], starring [[Bill Murray]].

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Pacific Islands and Asia. They typically express the emotional toll the colonists bear by their isolation. "[[Rain (short story)|Rain]]", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation" are considered especially notable. "Rain", in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a [[missionary]] attempting to convert prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its reputation. It has been adapted as a play and as several films. His ''[[The Magician (Maugham novel)|The Magician]]'' (1908) is based on British occultist [[Aleister Crowley]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Morgan |first=Ted |title=Somerset Maugham |year=1980 |url=https://archive.org/details/somersetmaugham0000morg |url-access=registration |location=London |publisher=Jonathan Cape |page=[https://archive.org/details/somersetmaugham0000morg/page/118 118] |isbn=0224018132}}</ref>

Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years and can be compared with contemporaries such as [[Evelyn Waugh]] and [[Freya Stark]]. His best efforts in this line include ''The Gentleman in the Parlour'', dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and ''On a Chinese Screen'', a series of very brief vignettes that might have been sketches for stories left unwritten. {{citation needed|date=August 2014}}

==Influence==
In 1947 Maugham instituted the [[Somerset Maugham Award]],<ref name="Meyers">{{cite book |last=Meyers |first=Jeffrey |title=Somerset Maugham: A Life |year=2004 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York}}</ref> awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of 35 for a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable winners include [[V. S. Naipaul]], [[Kingsley Amis]], [[Martin Amis]] and [[Thom Gunn]]. On his death, Maugham donated his royalties to the [[Royal Literary Fund]].<ref name="Meyers"/>

Other writers acknowledged his work. [[Anthony Burgess]] praised his influence. [[Ian Fleming]] noted that he wrote the short story "[[For Your Eyes Only (short story collection)#Quantum of Solace|Quantum of Solace]]" as an homage to Maugham's writing style.{{sfn|Chancellor|2005|p=148}}{{incomplete short citation|date=May 2021}} [[George Orwell]] said that Maugham was "the modern writer who has influenced me the most, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills".<ref>{{cite book |last=Orwell |first=George |title=My Country Right or Left: 1940–43 |year=1968 |publisher=Secker & Warburg |location=London}}</ref> In his novel ''[[Misery (novel)|Misery]]'', [[Stephen King]] places a rich collection of Maugham's books in the house where most of the plot is set, and incidentally praises Maugham's mastery of storytelling.

==Portraits==
[[File:Maugham caric.jpg|thumb|Maugham was the subject of this caricature by [[David Low (cartoonist)|David Low]].]]
Many portraits were painted of Somerset Maugham, including that by [[Graham Sutherland]]<ref name="Sutherland">Sutherland, Graham, [http://www.state-of-art.org/state-of-art/ISSUE%20THREE/PIX/Cat%2084%20Somerset%20Maugham%20(1949),%20oil%20on%20canvas,%20Tate.jpg Somerset MAUGHAM]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080414154020/http://www.state-of-art.org/state-of-art/ISSUE%20THREE/PIX/Cat%2084%20Somerset%20Maugham%20(1949),%20oil%20on%20canvas,%20Tate.jpg |date=14 April 2008}}. 1949. Oil on canvas, Tate Gallery.</ref> in the [[Tate Gallery]], and several by [[Gerald Festus Kelly|Sir Gerald Kelly]]. Sutherland's portrait was included in the exhibition ''[[Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000]]'' at the [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]].

== In popular culture ==

Somerset Maugham is mentioned in the lyrics of [[One Night in Bangkok]] sung by [[Murray Head]]: "Tea, girls, warm, (and) sweet; Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite."

==Bibliography==
{{Main|List of works by W. Somerset Maugham}}

===Editions===
* Burgess, Anthony (ed.) ''Maugham's Malaysian Stories'' (Hong Kong: Heinemann, 1969) [no ISBN]. Selected and introduced by [[Anthony Burgess]]. Includes ''The Vessel of Wrath'', ''The Force of Circumstance'', ''The Door of Opportunity'', ''The Four Dutchmen'', ''P. & O.'', and ''A Casual Affair''. Out of print.
* Maugham, W. Somerset ''Collected Stories'' (London: Everyman's Library, 2004) {{ISBN|9781857152760}}.

==Film adaptations==
* ''[[The Land of Promise]]'' (1917), directed by [[Joseph Kaufman (director)|Joseph Kaufman]] and starring [[Thomas Meighan]] and David van Eyck. Based on the 1913 play of the same name.
* ''[[Smith (1917 film)|Smith]]'' (1917), directed by [[Maurice Elvey]]. Based on the 1913 play of the same name.
* ''[[The Divorcee (1919 film)|The Divorcee]]'' (1919), directed by [[Herbert Blaché]]. Based on the 1907 play ''[[Lady Frederick]]''.
* ''[[East of Suez (1925 film)|East of Suez]]'' (1925), directed by [[Raoul Walsh]]. Based on the seven-act play of the same name.
* ''[[The Circle (1925 film)|The Circle]]'' (1925), directed by [[Frank Borzage]]. Based on the 1921 play of the same name.
* ''[[The Canadian (1926 film)|The Canadian]]'' (1926), directed by [[William Beaudine]]. Based on the 1913 play ''The Land of Promise'', this was a remake of the 1917 film of that name, with Thomas Meighan reprising his role as Frank Taylor.
* ''[[The Magician (1926 film)|The Magician]]'' (1926). Based on the 1908 novel of the same name.
* ''[[Sadie Thompson (film)|Sadie Thompson]]'' (1928), a silent movie starring [[Gloria Swanson]] and [[Lionel Barrymore]]. Based on the short story "[[Rain (short story)|Miss Thompson]]", which was later retitled "Rain".
* ''[[The Letter (1929 film)|The Letter]]'' (1929), featuring [[Jeanne Eagels]], [[O. P. Heggie|O.P. Heggie]], [[Reginald Owen]] and [[Herbert Marshall]]. Based on the play of the same name.
* ''[[Charming Sinners]]'' (1929), featuring [[Ruth Chatterton]], [[Clive Brook]], [[Mary Nolan]] and [[William Powell]]. Based on the play ''[[The Constant Wife]]''.
* ''[[Rain (1932 film)|Rain]]'' (1932), with [[Joan Crawford]] and [[Walter Huston]]. The first sound version of the short story "Miss Thompson" (later retitled "Rain").
* ''[[The Narrow Corner (film)|The Narrow Corner]]'' (1933), starring [[Douglas Fairbanks Jr.]] and directed by [[Alfred E. Green]]. Based on [[The Narrow Corner|the novel of the same name]].
* ''[[Our Betters]]'' (1933), directed by [[George Cukor]]. Based on the play of the same name.
* ''[[Of Human Bondage (1934 film)|Of Human Bondage]]'' (1934), starring [[Leslie Howard (actor)|Leslie Howard]] and [[Bette Davis]]. Based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[The Painted Veil (1934 film)|The Painted Veil]]'' (1934), featuring [[Greta Garbo]] and Herbert Marshall. Based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[The Right to Live (1935 film)|The Right to Live]]'' (1935), starring [[George Brent]] and [[Josephine Hutchinson]]. Based on the play ''[[The Sacred Flame (play)|The Sacred Flame]]''.
* ''[[Secret Agent (1936 film)|Secret Agent]]'' (1936), starring [[John Gielgud]], [[Peter Lorre]], [[Madeleine Carroll]] and [[Robert Young (actor)|Robert Young]], directed by [[Alfred Hitchcock]]. Based on ''[[Ashenden: Or the British Agent|Ashenden]]''.
* ''[[The Tenth Man (1936 film)|The Tenth Man]]'' (1936), directed by [[Brian Desmond Hurst]]. Based on the play of the same name.
* ''[[Isle of Fury]]'' (1936), starring [[Humphrey Bogart]]. Based on the novel ''[[The Narrow Corner]]''.
* ''[[Another Dawn (1937 film)|Another Dawn]]'' (1937), starring [[Errol Flynn]]. Based on the play ''[[Caesar's Wife (play)|Caesar's Wife]]''.
* ''[[The Vessel of Wrath]]'' (1938), starring [[Charles Laughton]]; released in the United States as ''The Beachcomber''. Based on the novella of the same name.
* ''[[The Letter (1940 film)|The Letter]]'' (1940), featuring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, [[James Stephenson]], [[Frieda Inescort]] and [[Gale Sondergaard]]. Based on the play of the same name.
* ''[[Too Many Husbands]]'' (1940), featuring [[Jean Arthur]], [[Fred MacMurray]] and [[Melvyn Douglas]]. Based on the play ''Home and Beauty''.
* ''[[The Moon and Sixpence (film)|The Moon and Sixpence]]'' (1942) with [[George Sanders]]. Based on [[The Moon and Sixpence|the novel of the same name]].
* ''[[Christmas Holiday]]'' (1944), starring [[Deanna Durbin]] and [[Gene Kelly]], based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[The Hour Before the Dawn]]'' (1944), starring [[Veronica Lake]], based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.]]'' (1946). Unauthorized film version of "Miss Thompson" with an all-black cast, directed by [[Spencer Williams (actor)|Spencer Williams]].
* ''[[The Razor's Edge (1946 film)|The Razor's Edge]]'' (1946). featuring [[Tyrone Power]] and [[Gene Tierney]]. Based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[Of Human Bondage (1946 film)|Of Human Bondage]]'' (1946), a version starring [[Eleanor Parker]].
* ''[[The Unfaithful (1947 film)|The Unfaithful]]'' (1947), starring [[Ann Sheridan]], based on ''The Letter''.
* ''[[Quartet (1948 film)|Quartet]]'' (1948). Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Based on four of his short stories.
* ''[[Trio (film)|Trio]]'' (1950). Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Another collection based on short stories.
* ''[[Encore (1951 film)|Encore]]'' (1951). Maugham appears as himself in introductions. A third collection of Maugham short stories.
* ''[[Miss Sadie Thompson]]'' (1953), a semi-[[musical film|musical]] version in 3-D, featuring [[Rita Hayworth]] and [[José Ferrer]].
* ''The Letter'' (1956), TV adaptation starring [[Siobhan McKenna]]. Based on the play of the same name.
* ''[[The Seventh Sin]]'' (1957), with Eleanor Parker. Based on the novel ''The Painted Veil''.
* ''[[The Beachcomber (1954 film)|The Beachcomber]]'' (1958). Based on the novella ''The Vessel of Wrath''; not to be confused with the 1938 film.
* ''[[Adorable Julia|Julia, du bist zauberhaft]]'' (1962), starring [[Lilli Palmer]] and [[Charles Boyer]]. Based on the novel ''[[Theatre (novel)|Theatre]]''.
* ''[[Of Human Bondage (1964 film)|Of Human Bondage]]'' (1964), with [[Laurence Harvey]] and [[Kim Novak]].
* ''The Letter'' (1969), starring [[Eileen Atkins]]. Based on the play of the same name. (Made for television.)
* ''Theatre'' (1978), starring [[Vija Artmane]]. Based on the novel of the same name.
* ''The Letter'' (1982), featuring [[Lee Remick]], [[Jack Thompson (actor)|Jack Thompson]] and [[Ronald Pickup]]. Based on the play of the same name. (Made for television.)
* ''[[The Razor's Edge (1984 film)|The Razor's Edge]]'' (1984), with [[Bill Murray]]. Based on the novel of the same name.
* ''[[Up at the Villa (film)|Up at the Villa]]'' (2000), starring [[Kristin Scott Thomas]] and [[Sean Penn]], directed by Philip Haas. Based on the novella of the same name.
* ''[[Being Julia]]'' (2004), featuring [[Annette Bening]]. Based on the novel ''Theatre''.
* ''[[The Painted Veil (2006 film)|The Painted Veil]]'' (2006), with [[Naomi Watts]] and [[Edward Norton]]. Based on the novel of the same name.

==See also==
* [[List of ambulance drivers during World War I]]

==References==
{{Reflist|22em}}

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

== Sources ==
{{div col | small = yes | colwidth = 30em}}
* Hastings, Selina, 2009; ''The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham – A biography''. London, John Murray. {{ISBN|978-0-7195-6554-0}}
* Hastings, Selina, 2009 [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/excerpt-the-secret-lives-of-somerset-maugham.html "A blackstable boyhood"]
* {{cite book |last=Hastings |first=Selina |title=The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham |year=2010 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Klein |first1=Fritz |title=The Bisexual Option |publisher=Routledge |year=2014 |isbn=9781317713210 }}
* Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1955; ''The Artist and the Theatre''. William Heinemann Ltd
* Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1980; ''Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings''. Heinemann & the National Theatre
* {{cite book |author=Maugham, Robin |year=1970 |title=Escape from the Shadows |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson }}
* Maugham, Robin, 1977; ''Somerset and all the Maughams''. Greenwood Press. {{ISBN|0-8371-8236-0}}
* Maugham, Robin, 1977; ''Search for Nirvana''. W. H. Allen.
* Maugham, W. Somerset, 1938; ''[[The Summing Up]]''. Garden City Publishing Company.
* Maugham, W. Somerset, 1962; ''Looking Back''. As serialised in ''Show'', June, July & August.
* Meyers, Jeffrey, 2004; ''Somerset Maugham: A life''. Knopf. {{ISBN|978-0-375-41475-6}}
* [[Giles Milton|Milton, Giles]] ''Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot'', Sceptre, 2013. {{ISBN|978-1-4447-3702-8}}
* Morgan, Ted, 1980; ''Somerset Maugham'' Jonathan Cape. {{ISBN|0-224-01813-2}}
* Morgan, Ted, 1984; ''Maugham'' Touchstone Books. {{ISBN|0-671-50581-5}}.
* [[Beverley Nichols|Nichols, Beverley]] 1966, ''A Case of Human Bondage''
* Rogal, Samuel J., 1997; ''A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia''. Greenwood Press. {{ISBN|0-313-29916-1}}.
* [[Gore Vidal|Vidal, Gore]], 1 February 1990; ''The New York Review of Books''.
* {{citation |surname1=Popplewell |given1=Richard J. |year=1995 |title=Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924 |url=http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=071464580X&parent_id=&pc= |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-7146-4580-X}}
* {{citation |surname1=Woods |given1=B.F. |year=2007 |title=Neutral Ground: A Political History of Espionage Fiction |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=978-0-87586-535-5}}
* {{citation |title=Partial Payments |surname1=Epstein |given1=Joseph |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-393-30716-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/partialpayments00jose }}
* Venkataramiah, Munagala, 15 October 1938, ''Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi''.
* {{citation |surname1=Munagala |given1=Venkataramiah |year=1938 |title=Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi |url=http://www.sriramanamaharshi.org |publisher=Sri Ramanashramam, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India |isbn=81-88018-07-4 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130828074451/http://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/ |archive-date=28 August 2013 }}
{{div col end}}

==External links==
{{Library resources box}}
{{commons category|William Somerset Maugham}}
{{Wikiquote|William Somerset Maugham}}
{{Wikisource author|William Somerset Maugham}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-somerset-maugham}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=126 |name=Somerset Maugham}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset)|name=W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=William Somerset Maugham}}
* {{Librivox author|id=73}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20141026114336/http://www.caxtonclub.org/reading/smaugham.html Caxton Club Biography (Archived October 26, 2014)]
* [http://www.britishempire.co.uk/biography/maugham.htm The British Empire, Biographies, Authors]
* {{IMDb name|0560857|W. Somerset Maugham}}
* {{IBDB name|id = 8707}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20111117133221/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=W.&last=Maugham&middle=Somerset W. Somerset Maugham] at [[Internet Off-Broadway Database]]
* [http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=7207 National Theatre, Maugham's Theatrical Collection]
* [http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=7113 National Theatre, Shakespearean Characters]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090830080315/http://geocities.com/upakaascetic/footnote03.html Maugham's The Razor's Edge]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080723090323/http://www.maleisie.be/en/literature_william_somerset_maugham.html William Somerset Maugham's stories on Malaya, Borneo and Singapore]
* [http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/maugham.html W. S. Maugham: correspondence, contracts, and manuscripts in Indiana University]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930203623/http://www.iblist.com/author1025.htm W. Somerset Maugham] at the Internet Book List
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100819013730/http://www.selinahastings.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=62 "The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham" – A Biography of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings.]
* [[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.maugham|W. Somerset Maugham Collection]]. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

{{W. Somerset Maugham|state=expanded}}
{{Hindu-German Conspiracy}}
{{The Painted Veil}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maugham, Somerset}}
[[Category:1874 births]]
[[Category:1965 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century British novelists]]
[[Category:19th-century British short story writers]]
[[Category:20th-century British dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:Alumni of King's College London]]
[[Category:Bisexual men]]
[[Category:Bisexual writers]]
[[Category:British expatriates in France]]
[[Category:British expatriates in the United States]]
[[Category:British male dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:British medical writers]]
[[Category:English agnostics]]
[[Category:English atheists]]
[[Category:English dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:English male short story writers]]
[[Category:English short story writers]]
[[Category:Heidelberg University alumni]]
[[Category:Hindu–German Conspiracy]]
[[Category:LGBT dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English LGBT novelists]]
[[Category:Maugham family|W. Somerset Maugham]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour]]
[[Category:People educated at The King's School, Canterbury]]
[[Category:People with speech impediment]]
[[Category:Secret Intelligence Service personnel]]
[[Category:Victorian novelists]]
[[Category:World War I spies for the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Writers from Paris]]

Bharatpedia - User contributions [en]

W. Somerset Maugham