The Moon and Sixpence
William Somerset Maugham
(25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) The British novelist William Somerset Maugham, one of the most popular writers in English in the 20th century, is noted for his clarity of style and skill in storytelling.
Born in Paris, of Irish ancestry, Somerset Maugham was to lead a fascinating life and would become famous for his mastery of short evocative stories that were often set in the more obscure and remote areas of the British Empire. Suffering from a bad stammer, he received a classic public school education at King's school in Canterbury, Kent. Rather more unconventionally he studied at Heidelburg University where he read philosophy and literature. He then studied in London, eventually qualifying as a surgeon at St Thomas's hospital. He conducted his year's medical practice in the slums of the East End. It was here that he found material for his first, rather lurid, novel Liza of Lambeth in 1897 and much of the material for his critically acclaimed autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage although this wasn't to be published until 1915.
He moved to Paris where he would strike up a successful working relationship with Laurence Housman and write a number of plays that would be run in London from 1908. At the outbreak of The Great War, Maugham, at age 40 and 5'6" was both too old and too short to enlist in the military so he joined a British Red Cross ambulance unit attached to the French Army, becoming like his comtemporaries, one of many Literary Ambulance Drivers. One of his co-drivers was Desmond MacCarthy, a writer in his own right who later became literary critic for The London Sunday Times. Before long Maugham was recruited for a far more interesting assignment as secret agent in Geneva and then Petrograd. In Russia, he was given the rather mammoth job of attempting to prevent the Russian Revolution from starting. His novel Ashenden published in 1928 would draw on these eclectic experiences.
Continuing with more peacable
(25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) The British novelist William Somerset Maugham, one of the most popular writers in English in the 20th century, is noted for his clarity of style and skill in storytelling.
Born in Paris, of Irish ancestry, Somerset Maugham was to lead a fascinating life and would become famous for his mastery of short evocative stories that were often set in the more obscure and remote areas of the British Empire. Suffering from a bad stammer, he received a classic public school education at King's school in Canterbury, Kent. Rather more unconventionally he studied at Heidelburg University where he read philosophy and literature. He then studied in London, eventually qualifying as a surgeon at St Thomas's hospital. He conducted his year's medical practice in the slums of the East End. It was here that he found material for his first, rather lurid, novel Liza of Lambeth in 1897 and much of the material for his critically acclaimed autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage although this wasn't to be published until 1915.
He moved to Paris where he would strike up a successful working relationship with Laurence Housman and write a number of plays that would be run in London from 1908. At the outbreak of The Great War, Maugham, at age 40 and 5'6" was both too old and too short to enlist in the military so he joined a British Red Cross ambulance unit attached to the French Army, becoming like his comtemporaries, one of many Literary Ambulance Drivers. One of his co-drivers was Desmond MacCarthy, a writer in his own right who later became literary critic for The London Sunday Times. Before long Maugham was recruited for a far more interesting assignment as secret agent in Geneva and then Petrograd. In Russia, he was given the rather mammoth job of attempting to prevent the Russian Revolution from starting. His novel Ashenden published in 1928 would draw on these eclectic experiences.
Continuing with more peacable