W. Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)
- Writer
- Actor
Popular British novelist, playwright, short-story writer and the
highest-paid author in the world in the 1930s, Somerset Maugham
graduated in 1897 from St. Thomas' Medical School and qualified as a
doctor, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels
and plays. During World War I he worked as a secret agent and in 1928
settled in Cap Ferrat in France, from where he made journeys all over
the world. Maugham's spy novel "Ashenden; or The British Agent" (1928)
is partly based on his own experiences in the secret service. In making
the transition from secret agent to writer, Maugham carried on in the
tradition of such classic writers as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe
to such contemporary writers as Graham Greene, John le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Alec Waugh and
Ted Allbeury. Maugham's skill in handling plot is compared by critics to
that of Guy de Maupassant. In many of Maugham's novels the surroundings are
international and the stories are told in a clear, economical style
with a cynical or resigned undertone. Although Maugham was successful
as an author he was never knighted and his relationship with Gerald
Haxton, his secretary, has been subject to speculation.
