W . Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham CH ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965 ) was a British 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 . After losing both his parents by the age of 10 , Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold . Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family , Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor . The first run of his first novel , " Liza of Lambeth " ( 1897 ) , sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full - time . 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 , for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 . During and after the war , he traveled in India and Southeast Asia ; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels . Childhood and education . Maugham ' s father , Robert Ormond Maugham , was a lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris . Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service , his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy , technically on British soil . His grandfather , another Robert , had also been a prominent lawyer and co - founder of the English Law Society . It was taken for granted that Maugham and his brothers would follow in their footsteps . His elder brother Viscount Maugham enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939 . Maugham ' s mother , Edith Mary ( née Snell ) , had tuberculosis ( TB ) , a condition for which her doctor prescribed childbirth . She had Maugham several years after the last of his three older brothers ; they were already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three . Being the youngest , he was effectively raised as an only child . Edith ' s sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882 , one day after his birth , on Maugham ' s eighth birthday . Edith died of TB six days later on 31 January at the age of 41 . The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized ; he kept his mother ' s photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life . Two years after Edith ' s death , Maugham ' s father died in France of cancer . Maugham was sent to the UK to be cared for by his uncle , Henry MacDonald Maugham , the Vicar of Whitstable , in Kent . The move was damaging , as Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel . 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 stammer that would stay with him all his life , although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance . 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 sixteen , 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 . He also wrote his first book there , a biography of Giacomo Meyerbeer , an opera composer . On Maugham ' s return to Britain , his uncle found his nephew a position in an accountant ' s office , but after a month , Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable . His uncle set about finding Maugham a new profession . Maugham ' s father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers , and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps . A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous . His uncle rejected the civil service , not because of the young man ' s feelings or interests , but because his uncle concluded that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen ; a recent law required applicants to pass an entry examination . The local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham ' s uncle agreed . Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently wished to become an author , but as he was not of age , he refrained from telling his guardian . For the next five years , he studied medicine at St Thomas ' Hospital in Lambeth , London . Career . Early works . Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end , but Maugham felt the contrary . He was living in the great city of 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 . . . " 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 wrote his second book , " 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 . " " Liza of Lambeth " ' s first print run sold out in a matter of weeks . Maugham , who had qualified as a doctor , 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 . " 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 " published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards . Maugham ' s supernatural thriller , " 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 " . Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation . Popular success , 1914 – 39 . 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 " Literary Ambulance Drivers " , a group of some 24 well - known writers , including the Americans John Dos Passos and E . E . Cummings . During this time , he met Frederick Gerald Haxton , a young San Franciscan , who became his companion and lover until Haxton ' s death in 1944 . Throughout this period , Maugham continued to write . He proofread " Of Human Bondage " at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties . " 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 Beethoven symphony . His review gave the book a lift , and it has never been out of print since . Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in Baruch Spinoza ' s " Ethics " : " 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 doctor . Maugham insisted the book was more invention than fact . The close relationship between fictional and non - fictional became Maugham ' s trademark , despite the legal requirement to state that " the characters in [ this or that publication ] are entirely imaginary " . In 1938 he wrote : " Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now , looking back on it , I can hardly distinguish one from the other . " Marriage and family . Although Maugham ' s first and many other sexual relationships were with men , he also had sexual relationships with a number of women . He had an affair with Syrie Wellcome , the wife of Henry Wellcome , the American - born English pharmaceutical magnate . They had a daughter named Mary Elizabeth Wellcome , ( 1915 – 1998 ) . Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce , naming Maugham as co - respondent . 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 . " Their daughter was familiarly called Liza and her surname was changed to Maugham . Syrie finally divorced him in 1929 , finding his relationship and travels with Haxton too difficult to live with . Intelligence work . Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties 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 . In September 1915 , Maugham began work in Switzerland , as one of the network of British agents who operated against the Berlin Committee . Its members included Virendranath Chattopadhyay , an Indian revolutionary trying to use the war to create violence against the British in his country . Maugham lived in Switzerland as a writer . 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 which inspired his novels . He became known as a writer who portrayed the last days of 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 converted to fiction . In June 1917 , Maugham was asked by Sir William Wiseman , an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service ( later named MI6 ) , to undertake a special mission in Russia . It was part of an attempt to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda . 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 he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances . Maugham used his spying experiences as the basis for " , " 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 . 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 . Dramatised from a story first published in his collection " The Casuarina Tree " ( 1924 ) , Maugham ' s 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 version . The play was adapted as a film by the same name in 1929 , and again in 1940 , for which Bette Davis received an Oscar nomination . In 1951 , Cornell was a great success playing the lead in his comedy , " The Constant Wife " . In 1926 , Maugham bought Villa Mauresque , on 9 acres ( 3 . 6 hectares ) at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera . His home for most of the rest of his life , he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s . He continued to be highly productive , writing plays , short stories , novels , essays and travel books . By 1940 , when the collapse of France and German occupation in the Second World War forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera , he was a refugee but one of the most famous and wealthiest writers in the English - speaking world . Maugham ' s novel , " An Appointment in Samarra " ( 1933 ) , is based on an ancient Babylonian myth : Death is both the narrator and a central character . The American writer John O ' Hara credited Maugham ' s novel as a creative inspiration for his own novel " Appointment in Samarra " . Grand old man of letters . Maugham , by then in his sixties , spent most of the Second World War in the United States , first in Hollywood ( he worked on many scripts , and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations ) and later in the South . While in the US , 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 moved back to England . In 1946 he returned to his villa in France , where he lived , interrupted by frequent and long travels , until his death . Maugham began a relationship with Alan Searle , whom he had first met in 1928 . A young man from the London slum area of Bermondsey , Searle had already been kept by older men . He proved a devoted if not a stimulating companion . One of Maugham ' s friends , describing the difference between Haxton and Searle , said simply : " Gerald was vintage , Alan was " vin ordinaire " . " 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 . " In 1962 Maugham sold a collection of paintings , some of which had already been assigned to his daughter Liza by deed . She sued her father and won a judgment of £230 , 000 . Maugham publicly disowned her and claimed she was not his biological daughter . He adopted Searle as his son and heir . 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 , in 1965 Searle inherited £50 , 000 , the contents of Villa 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 . 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 ) . One of her grandchildren is Derek Paravicini , who is a musical prodigy and autistic savant . 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 . " 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 criticized 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 " . 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 : " 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 . " But Maugham ' s homosexuality or bisexuality is believed to have shaped his fiction in two ways . Since he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals , he often gave his women characters sexual needs and appetites , in a way quite unusual for authors of his time . " Liza of Lambeth " , " Cakes and Ale " , " Neil MacAdam " and " The Razor ' s Edge , " all featured women determined to feed their strong sexual appetites , heedless of the result . As Maugham ' s sexual appetites were then officially disapproved of , or criminal , in nearly all of the countries in which he traveled , the author was unusually tolerant of the vices of others . Some readers and critics complained that Maugham did not condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays . Maugham replied : " It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me . " Maugham ' s public view of his abilities remained modest . Toward the end of his career he described himself as " in the very first row of the second - raters " . In 1948 he wrote " Great Novelists and Their Novels " in which he listed the ten best novels of world literature in his view . In 1954 , he was made a Companion of Honour . 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 . In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre . From 1951 , some 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 . Significant works . Maugham ' s masterpiece is generally agreed to be " Of Human Bondage " , a semiautobiographical 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 . 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 characterizations 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 : " 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 . " 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 , traveling 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 quickly adapted as a movie . Among his short stories , some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western , mostly British , colonists in the Far East . They typically express the emotional toll the colonists bear by their isolation . " 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 the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson , has kept its reputation . It has been adapted as a play and as several films . Maugham said that many of his short stories were inspired by accounts he heard during his travels in the outposts of the Empire . After publication , he left behind a long string of angry former hosts . Maugham ' s restrained prose allows him to explore the tensions and passions without appearing melodramatic . His " The Magician " ( 1908 ) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley . 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 . Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard , which Maugham had enjoyed for their conscientiousness , wisdom and wit , Maugham published selections from his own journals under the title " A Writer ' s Notebook " ( 1949 ) . Although these journal selections are , by nature , episodic and of varying quality , they range over more than 50 years of the writer ' s life and contain much that Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest . Influence . In 1947 Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award , awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty - five 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 copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund . Other writers acknowledged his work . Anthony Burgess , who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel " Earthly Powers " , praised his influence . George Orwell said that Maugham was " the modern writer who has influenced me the most . " Portraits of Maugham . Many portraits were painted of Somerset Maugham , including that by Graham Sutherland in the Tate Gallery , and several by Sir Gerald Kelly . Sutherland ' s portrait was included in the exhibit " Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900 - 2000 " at the National Portrait Gallery .