Maugham's novels. Somerset Maugham. Quotes and aphorisms

Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 at the British Embassy in Paris. This birth of a child was more planned than accidental. Because at that time a law was written in France, the essence of which was that all young men born on French territory had to be drafted into the army upon reaching adulthood.

Naturally, the very thought that their son, with English blood flowing in his veins, could soon join the ranks of the army that would fight against England frightened the parents and required decisive action. There was only one way to avoid this kind of situation - by giving birth to a child on the territory of the English embassy, ​​which, according to existing laws, was equivalent to birth on the territory of England.

William was the fourth child in the family. And from the very early childhood he was predicted to have a future as a lawyer, since both his father and grandfather were prominent lawyers, two brothers later became lawyers, and the second brother Frederick Herbert, who later became Lord Chancellor and Peer of England, was considered the most successful. But, as time has shown, the plans were not destined to come true.

Being born in Paris could not but affect the child. So, for example, a boy up to the age of eleven spoke only French. And the reason that prompted the child to start learning English was sudden death his mother Edith died of consumption when he was eight, and his father died two years later. As a result, the boy finds himself in the care of his uncle Henry Maugham, who lived in the city of Whitstable in England, in the county of Kent. My uncle was a parish priest.

This period of life was not happy for little Maugham. My uncle and his wife were very callous, boring and rather stingy people. The boy also faced an acute problem of communicating with his guardians. Not knowing English, he could not establish relationships with new relatives. And, in the end, the result of such ups and downs in the young man’s life was that he began to stutter and Maugham would have this disease for the rest of his life.

William Maugham was sent to study at the Royal School, which was located in Canterbury, an ancient town located southeast of London. And here little William had more reasons for concern and worry than for happiness. He was constantly teased by his peers for his natural short stature and stuttering. English with a distinctive French accent was also a source of ridicule.

Therefore, moving to Germany in 1890 to study at the University of Heidelberg was an indescribable, indescribable happiness. Here he finally begins to study literature and philosophy, trying with all his might to get rid of his inherent accent. Here he will write his first work - a biography of the composer Meyerbeer. True, this work will not cause a “storm of applause” from the publisher and Maugham will burn it, but this will be his first conscious attempt at writing.

In 1892, Maugham moved to London and entered medical school. This decision was not caused by a craving and inclination for medicine, but was made only because a young man from a decent family needed to get some more or less decent profession, and his uncle’s pressure also had an influence in this matter. Subsequently, he would receive a diploma as a physician and surgeon, and even work for some time at St. Thomas's Hospital, which was located in one of the poorest areas of London.

But the most important thing for him during this period was literature. Even then he clearly understands that this is precisely his calling and at night he begins to write his first creations. On weekends, he visits theaters and the Tivoli music hall, where he will watch all the performances that he could watch from the very back seats.

The period of his life associated with his medical career is visible in his novel "Lisa of Lambeth", which was published by Fisher Unwin in 1897. The novel was accepted by both professionals and the general public. The first editions sold out in a matter of weeks, which gave Maugham confidence in the correctness of his choice towards literature rather than medicine.

1898 reveals William Maugham Somerset as a playwright, he writes his first play, “Man of Honor,” which will premiere on the stage of a modest theater only five years later. The play did not cause any furor, it was performed only for two evenings, and the reviews from critics were, to put it mildly, terrible. In fairness, it is worth noting that later, a year later, Maugham would remake this play, radically changing the ending. And already in the commercial theater "Avenue Theater" the play will be shown more than twenty times.

Despite his relatively unsuccessful first experience in drama, within ten years William Somerset Maugham would become a widely known and recognized playwright. The comedy Lady Frederick, which was staged in 1908 on the Court Theater stage, enjoyed particular success. A number of plays were also written that raised issues of inequality in society, hypocrisy, and corruption of representatives different levels authorities.

These plays were received by society and critics differently - some sharply criticized them, others praised them for their wit and theatricality. However, despite the mixed reviews, it should be noted that on the eve of the First World War, Maugham Somerset became a recognized playwright, performances based on whose works were successfully staged both in England and abroad.

At the beginning of the war, the writer served with the British Red Cross. Subsequently, employees of the well-known British intelligence service MI5 recruit him into their ranks. So the writer becomes an intelligence officer and goes first to Switzerland for a year and then to Russia to carry out a secret mission, the purpose of which was to prevent Russia from leaving the war. He met with such famous political players of the time as A.F. Kerensky, B.V. Savinkov. and others.

Maugham would later write that this idea was doomed to failure and he turned out to be a poor agent. The first positive aspect of this mission was Maugham’s discovery of Russian literature. In particular, he discovered Dostoevsky F.M., and was especially amazed by the works of Chekhov A.P., even began to learn Russian in order to read Anton Pavlovich in the original. The second point was Maugham’s writing of a collection of short stories, “Ashenden or the British Agent,” dedicated to espionage themes.

During the period between the two world wars, the writer wrote a lot and also traveled often, which gave him the basis for writing new and new works. Now these are not only novels or plays, but also a number of short stories, sketches, and essays have been written. A special place in the writer's work is autobiographical novel"The Burden of Human Passions." Writers of the time such as Thomas Wolfe and Theodore Dreiser recognized the novel as a genius. During the same period of time, Maugham gravitated towards a new direction for him - socio-psychological drama. Examples of such works are “The Unknown”, “For Merit”, “Sheppy”.

When did the second one begin? world war Maugham was in France. And it was not by chance that he ended up there, but by order of the Ministry of Information he was supposed to study the mood of the French and visit ships in Toulon. The result of such actions were articles that give the reader complete confidence that France will fight to the end and will survive this confrontation. His book “France at War” is permeated with the same sentiments.

And just three months after the book’s publication, France would surrender, and Maugham would need to urgently leave the country for England, as there were rumors that the Germans had blacklisted his name. From England he travels to the USA, where he arrives until the end of the war. Returning to France after the war was full of sadness - his house was looted, the country was in complete devastation, but the main positive point was that the hated fascism was not just stopped, but destroyed to the ground and it was possible to live and write further.

It is no coincidence that during this post-war period Somerset Maugham wrote historical novels. In the books “Then and Now” and “Catalina” the writer talks about power and its influence on people, about rulers and their policies, and pays attention to true patriotism. These novels show a new style of writing novels; there is a lot of tragedy in them. “The Razor's Edge” is one of the last, if not the last, significant novel of the writer. The novel was definitive in many respects. When Maugham was once asked: “How long did it take him to write this book,” the answer was “All his life.”

In 1947, the writer decides to approve the Somerset Maugham Prize, which should be awarded to the best English writers under the age of 35. In June 1952, the writer was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at Oxford.

IN recent years he immerses himself in writing an essay. And the book “Great Writers and Their Novels,” published in 1848, is a clear confirmation of this. In this book, the reader meets such heroes as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Dickens and Emily Bronte, Fielding and Jane Austen, Stendhal and Balzac, Melville and Flaubert. All these great people accompanied Maugham throughout his long life.

Later, in 1952, his collection “Changable Moods” was published, consisting of six essays, where memories of such novelists as G. James, G. Wells and A. Bennett, with whom Somerset Maugham was personally acquainted, are visible.

The writer died on December 15, 1965. It happened in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France. The cause of death was pneumonia. The writer does not have a burial place as such; it was decided to scatter his ashes under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury.

Writer.

“As experience tells me, you can achieve success in only one way - by telling the truth, as you understand it, about what you know for certain... Imagination will help the writer to assemble an important or beautiful pattern from disparate facts. It will help to see the whole behind the particular... However, if a writer sees the essence of things incorrectly, then imagination will only aggravate his mistakes, but correctly he can only see what he knows from personal experience" S. Maugham

Fate decreed that Somerset Maugham lived for ninety years and at the end of his life the writer came to the conclusion that he had always lived for the future. Maugham's creative longevity is impressive: having begun his career at the time of the growing fame of the late Victorians - Hardy, Kipling and Wilde, he ended it when new stars appeared on the literary horizon - Golding, Murdoch, Fowles and Spark. And at every turn of rapidly changing historical times, Maugham remained a modern writer.

In his works, Maugham comprehended the problems of a universal human and general philosophical plan; he was surprisingly sensitive to the tragic beginning characteristic of the events of the 20th century, as well as to the hidden drama of characters and human relationships. At the same time, he was often reproached for dispassion and cynicism, to which Maugham himself, following the idol of his youth, Maupassant, replied: “I am, without a doubt, considered one of the most indifferent people in the world. I'm a skeptic, this is not the same thing, a skeptic, because I have good eyes. My eyes tell my heart: hide, old man, you are funny. And the heart hides."

William Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in the family of a hereditary lawyer who served in the English embassy in Paris. Maugham's childhood, spent in France, passed in an atmosphere of goodwill, affectionate care and tender love of his mother, and childhood impressions determined much of his later life.

An Englishman, Maugham spoke predominantly French until the age of ten. Primary school he also graduated in France, and his English was later laughed at by his classmates for a long time when he returned to England. “I was embarrassed by the British,” Maugham admitted. He was eight years old when his mother died, and at the age of ten Maugham lost his father. This happened when the house in which his family was supposed to live was completed on the outskirts of Paris. But there was no more family - Somerset's older brothers studied at Cambridge, and were preparing to become lawyers, and Willie was sent to England in the care of his priest uncle Henry Maugham. In his parsonage and passed school years Maugham, who grew up lonely and withdrawn, felt like an outsider at school, and was very different from the boys growing up in England, who laughed at Maugham's stutter and the way he spoke English. He was unable to overcome his painful shyness. “I will never forget the suffering of these years,” said Maugham, who avoided memories of his childhood. He always had a constant wariness, a fear of being humiliated, and developed the habit of observing everything from a certain distance.

Books and a passion for reading helped Maugham escape from his surroundings. Willie lived in a world of books, among which his favorites were the tales of “The Arabian Nights,” “Alice in Wonderland” by Carroll, “Waverley” by Scott and the adventure novels of Captain Marryat. Maugham drew well, loved music and could apply for a place at Cambridge, but he was not deeply interested in it. He had fond memories of his teacher Thomas Field, whom Maugham later described under the name of Tom Perkins in the novel The Burden of Human Passions. But the joy of communicating with Field could not outweigh what Maugham had to learn in the classrooms and dormitories of the boarding school for boys.

The health of his nephew, who grew up as a sickly child, forced his guardian to send Maugham first to the south of France, and then to Germany, to Heidelberg. This trip determined a lot in the life and views of the young man. The University of Heidelberg at that time was a hotbed of culture and free thought. Cuno Fischer ignited minds with lectures on Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer; Wagner's music shocked, his theory of musical drama opened up unknown distances, Ibsen's plays, translated into German and staged on stage, excited and broke established ideas. At the university, Maugham felt his calling, but in a respectable family the position of a professional writer was considered dubious, his three older brothers were already lawyers, and Maugham decided to become a doctor. In the autumn of 1892, he returned to England and entered medical school at St. Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth, the poorest area of ​​London. Maugham later recalled: “During the years that I practiced medicine, I systematically studied English, French, Italian and Latin literature. I read a lot of books on history, some on philosophy and, of course, on natural science and medicine.”

Started in third year medical practice unexpectedly interested him. And three years of hard work in the hospital wards of one of the poorest areas of London helped Maugham understand human nature much deeper than the books he had previously read. And Somerset concluded: "I don't know best school for a writer than being a doctor." “During these three years,” Maugham wrote in his autobiographical book “Summing Up,” “I witnessed all the emotions of which a person is capable. It ignited my instinct as a playwright, stirred the writer in me... I saw people die. I saw how they endured pain. I saw what hope, fear, relief look like; I saw the black shadows that despair casts on faces; I saw courage and perseverance.”

Practicing medicine affected the peculiarities of Maugham’s creative style. Like other physician writers Sinclair Lewis and John O'Hara, his prose was devoid of exaggeration. The strict regime - from nine to six in the hospital - left Maugham free only in the evenings for literary studies, which Somerset spent reading books, and still He learned to write. He translated Ibsen's "Ghosts", trying to study the playwright's technique, wrote plays and stories. Maugham sent the manuscripts of two stories to the publisher Fisher Unwin, and one of them received a favorable review from E. Garnet - a well-known authority in literary circles, Garnet advised the unknown. the author to continue writing, and the publisher replied: what is needed is not stories, but a novel. After reading Unwin’s response, Maugham immediately began creating “Lisa of Lambeth.” In September 1897, this novel was published.

“When I started working on Lisa of Lambeth, I tried to write it the way, in my opinion, Maupassant should have done it,” Maugham later admitted. The book was not born under the influence literary images, but the author’s real impressions. Maugham tried to reproduce with maximum accuracy the life and customs of Lambeth, into whose ominous corners not every policeman dared to look, and where Maugham’s pass and safe-conduct served as the obstetrician’s black suitcase.

The appearance of Maugham's novel was preceded by loud scandal, inspired by T. Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, published in 1896. The fervor of the critics who accused Hardy of naturalism was thoroughly spent, and Maugham's debut was relatively calm. Moreover, tragic story girls, told with stern truthfulness and without a hint of any sentimentality, was a success among readers. And soon great luck awaited the aspiring writer in the theatrical field.

At first his one-act plays were rejected, but in 1902 one of them, “Marriages Are Made in Heaven,” was staged in Berlin. In England, it never came to be staged, although Maugham published the play in the small magazine “Adventure”. Maugham's truly successful career as a playwright began with the comedy Lady Frederick, staged in 1903, which Court-Tietre also directed in 1907. In the 1908 season, four of Maugham's plays were already performed in London. Bernard Partridge's cartoon appeared in Punch, which depicted Shakespeare languishing with envy in front of posters with the writer's name. Along with entertaining comedies, Maugham also created acutely critical plays in the pre-war years: “The Cream of the Society”, “Smith” and “The Promised Land”, which raised themes of social inequality, hypocrisy and corruption of representatives of the highest echelons of power. Maugham wrote about his profession as a playwright: “I would not go to see my plays at all, neither on the opening night, nor on any other evening, if I did not consider it necessary to test their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them.”

Maugham recalled that the reaction to his plays was mixed: “Public newspapers praised the plays for their wit, gaiety and theatricality, but scolded them for their cynicism; more serious critics were merciless towards them. They called them cheap, vulgar, and told me that I had sold my soul to Mammon. And the intelligentsia, which previously counted me among its modest but respected member, not only turned away from me, which would have been bad enough, but cast me into the abyss of hell as the new Lucifer.” On the eve of the First World War, his plays were successfully performed both in London theaters and overseas. But the war changed Maugham's life. He was drafted into the army, and first served in a medical battalion, and then joined British intelligence. Carrying out her assignments, he spent a year in Switzerland, and then was sent by Intelligence Service employees on a secret mission to Russia. At first, Maugham perceived this kind of activity, like Kipling’s Kim, as participation in “ big game“, but later, talking about this stage of his life, he called espionage not only dirty, but also boring work. The purpose of his stay in Petrograd, where he arrived in August 1917 through Vladivostok, was to prevent Russia from leaving the war. Meetings with Kerensky deeply disappointed Maugham. The Russian prime minister impressed him as an insignificant and indecisive person. Of all the political figures in Russia with whom he had the opportunity to talk, Maugham singled out only Savinkov as a major and extraordinary personality. Having received a secret assignment from Kerensky to Lloyd George, Maugham left for London on October 18, but a week later a revolution began in Russia, and his mission lost its meaning. But Maugham did not regret his fiasco, he subsequently made fun of his fate as an unsuccessful agent and was grateful to fate for the “Russian adventure.” Maugham wrote about Russia: “Endless conversations where action was required; fluctuations; apathy leading directly to disaster; the pompous declarations, insincerity and lethargy that I observed everywhere - all this alienated me from Russia and the Russians.” But he was glad to visit the country where Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment were written and discover Chekhov. He later said: “When the English intelligentsia became interested in Russia, I remembered that Cato began to study Greek at eighty years old, and took up Russian. But by that time my youthful ardor had diminished; I learned to read Chekhov’s plays, but I didn’t go further than that, and what little I knew then was long forgotten.”

The time between the two world wars was filled with intense writing and travel for Maugham. He spent two years in a tuberculosis sanatorium, which gave him inexhaustible new material for creativity, and later he acted in several capacities at once: as a novelist, playwright, short story writer, essayist and essayist. And his comedies and dramas began to compete on stage with the plays of Bernard Shaw himself. Maugham had real “stage instinct.” Writing plays came to him with amazing ease. They were full of winning roles, originally constructed, and the dialogue in them was always sharp and witty.

In the post-war period, significant changes occurred in Maugham's dramaturgy. In the comedy The Circle, written by him in 1921, Maugham sharply criticized the immorality of high society. Tragedy " lost generation"was revealed by him in the play "The Unknown". Also the atmosphere of the “roaring thirties”, deep economic crisis, the growing threat of fascism and a new world war determined the social sound of his last plays “For Special Merit” and “Sheppie”.

Maugham later wrote the novels “The Burden of Human Passions,” “The Moon and the Penny,” “Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet.” Their film adaptation brought the writer wide fame, and the autobiographical novel “The Burden of Human Passions” was recognized by critics and readers as the writer’s best achievement. Written in line with the traditional “novel of education,” it was distinguished by its amazing openness and utmost sincerity in revealing the drama of the soul. Theodore Dreiser was delighted with the novel and called Maugham a “great artist” and the book he wrote “a work of genius,” comparing it to Beethoven’s symphony. Maugham wrote about the book “The Burden of Human Passions”: “My book is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel, where facts are strongly mixed with fiction; I experienced the feelings described in it myself, but not all the episodes happened as described, and they were taken partly not from my life, but from the lives of people who were well known to me.”

Another paradox of Maugham is his personal life. Maugham was bisexual. His service as a special agent brought him to the United States, where the writer met a man for whom he carried his love throughout his entire life. This man was Frederick Gerald Haxton, an American born in San Francisco but raised in England, who later became Maugham's personal secretary and lover. Writer Beverly Nicolet, one of Maugham's friends, testified: “Maugham was not a “pure” homosexual. He, of course, also had love affairs with women; and there was no sign of feminine behavior or feminine mannerisms.” And Maugham himself wrote: “Let those who like me accept me as I am, and let the rest not accept me at all.” Maugham had a lot love affairs with famous women - in particular, with the famous feminist and editor of the magazine " Free woman» Violet Hunt, and with Sasha Kropotkin - the daughter of the famous Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who lived in exile in London. However, an important role in Maugham's life and only two women played. The first was the daughter of the famous playwright Ethelwyn Jones, better known as Sue Jones. Maugham loved her very much, called her Rosie, and it was under this name that she entered as one of the characters in his novel Pies and Beer. When Maugham met her, she had recently divorced her husband and was a popular actress. At first he didn’t want to marry her, and when he proposed to her, he was stunned - she refused him. It turned out that Sue was already pregnant by another man, whom she soon married.

Another of the writer's women was Cyrie Barnardo Wellcome, whom Maugham met in 1911. Her father was known for founding a network of shelters for homeless children, and Sairee herself had an unsuccessful family life. For some time, Cyrie and Maugham were inseparable, they had a daughter, whom they named Elizabeth, but Cyrie's husband found out about her relationship with Maugham and filed for divorce. Cyrie attempted suicide but survived, and when Cyrie divorced, Maugham married her. But soon Maugham's feelings for his wife changed. In one of his letters, he wrote: “I married you because I thought that this was the only thing I could do for you and for Elizabeth, to give you happiness and security. I didn’t marry you because I loved you so much, and you know this very well.” Maugham and Cyrie soon began to live separately, and a few years later Cyrie filed for divorce, getting it in 1929. Maugham wrote: “I have loved many women, but I have never known the bliss of mutual love.”

In the mid-thirties, Maugham purchased the Cap-Ferrat villa on the French Riviera, which became the home for the rest of the writer's life and one of the great literary and social salons. Winston Churchill and H.G. Wells visited the writer and came occasionally Soviet writers. His work continued to expand with plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, Somerset Maugham had become one of the most famous and wealthy writers in English fiction. Maugham did not hide the fact that he writes “not for the sake of money, but in order to get rid of the ideas, characters, types that haunt his imagination, but, at the same time, he does not mind at all if creativity provides him, among other things, with the opportunity to write what he wants and to be his own boss.”

The Second World War found Maugham in France. On instructions from the English Ministry of Information, he studied the mood of the French, spent more than a month on the Maginot Line, and visited warships in Toulon. He was confident that France would do its duty and fight to the end. His reports on this formed the book France at War, published in 1940. Three months after its release, France fell, and Maugham, who learned that the Nazis had blacklisted his name, barely made it to England on a coal barge, and later left for the United States, where he lived until the end of the war. Most of During the Second World War, Maugham was in Hollywood, where he worked on scripts, making amendments to them, and later lived in the South.

Having made a mistake in his forecast about France's ability to repel Hitler, Maugham compensated for it in the book Very Personal with a sharp analysis of the situation that led to defeat. He wrote that the French government, and the prosperous bourgeoisie and aristocracy behind it, were more afraid of Russian Bolshevism than of the German invasion. The tanks were kept not on the Maginot Line, but in the rear in case of a revolt by their own workers, corruption corroded society, and the spirit of decay took possession of the army.

In 1944, Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge was published and his colleague and lover Gerald Haxton died, after which Maugham moved to England, and then in 1946 to his ruined villa in France. The novel "The Razor's Edge" turned out to be the final one for Maugham in all respects. His idea was hatched for a long time, and the plot was briefly outlined in the story “The Fall of Edward Barnard” back in 1921. When asked how long he wrote this book, Maugham replied: “All his life.” In fact, the novel was the result of his thoughts about the meaning of life.

Post-war decade was also fruitful for the writer. Maugham first turned to the genre historical novel. In the books “Then and Now” and “Catalina,” the past appeared before readers as a lesson for the present. Maugham reflected in them on power and its impact on people, on the policies of rulers and on patriotism. These latest novels were written in a manner new to him and were deeply tragic.

After losing Haxton, Maugham resumed his intimate relationship with Alan Searle, a young man from the London slums whom he had met in 1928 while he was working for a hospital charity. Alan became the writer's new secretary, adored Maugham, who officially adopted him, depriving his daughter Elizabeth of the right to inherit, having learned that she was going to limit his rights to property through the court. Later, Elizabeth, through the court, nevertheless achieved recognition of her right to inheritance, and Maugham's adoption of Searle became invalid.

In 1947, the writer approved the Somerset Maugham Prize, which was awarded to the best English writers under the age of thirty-five. Having reached the age when the need to be critical of his surroundings begins to prevail, Maugham devoted himself entirely to essay writing. In 1948, his book “Great Writers and Their Novels” was published, the heroes of which were Fielding and Jane Austen, Stendhal and Balzac, Dickens and Emily Bronte, Melville and Flaubert, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who accompanied Maugham in life. Among the six essays that formed the collection “Changeable Moods”, memories of novelists whom he knew well - about H. James, H. Wells and A. Bennett, as well as the article “The Decline and Destruction of the Detective”, attracted attention.

Maugham's last book, Points of View, published in 1958, included a long essay on the short story, of which he had become a recognized master in the pre-war years. In his later years, Maugham came to the conclusion that a writer is more than a storyteller. There was a time when he liked to repeat, following Wilde, that the purpose of art is to give pleasure, that entertainment is an indispensable and main condition for success. Now he clarified that by entertaining he means not what amuses, but what arouses interest: “The more intellectually entertaining a novel offers, the better it is.”

On December 15, 1965, Somerset Maugham died at the age of 92 in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat from pneumonia. His ashes were scattered under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury.

Maugham herself said it best about her life: “For my own pleasure, for entertainment and to satisfy what was felt as an organic need, I built my life according to some plan - with a beginning, middle and end, just like those I met there. and these people I built a play, a novel or a story.”

The text was prepared by Tatyana Halina ( halimoshka )

Materials used:

Materials from the Wikipedia site

Text of the article “William Somerset Maugham: The Facets of Talent”, author G. E. Ionkis

Materials from the site www.modernlib.ru

Materials from the site www.bookmix.ru

Prose

• "Liza of Lambeth" (Liza of Lambeth, 1897)
• The Making of a Saint (1898)
• "Orientations" (Orientations, 1899)
• The Hero (1901)
• "Mrs. Craddock" (Mrs. Craddock, 1902)
• The Merry-go-round (1904)
• The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia (1905)
• The Bishop's Apron (1906)
• The Explorer (1908)
• "The Magician" (1908)
• “The Burden of Human Passions” (Of Human Bondage, 1915; Russian translation 1959)
• “The Moon and Sixpence” (The Moon and Sixpence, 1919, Russian translation 1927, 1960)
• “The Trembling of a Leaf” (1921)
• “On A Chinese Screen” (1922)
• “The Patterned Veil” / “The Painted Veil” (The Painted Veil, 1925)
• "Casuarina" (The Casuarina Tree, 1926)
• The Letter (Stories of Crime) (1930)
• "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (Ashenden, or the British Agent, 1928). Novels
• The Gentleman In The Parlor: A Record of a Journey From Rangoon to Haiphong (1930)
• “Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard” (1930)
• The Book Bag (1932)
• "The Narrow Corner" (1932)
• Ah King (1933)
• The Judgment Seat (1934)
• "Don Fernando" (Don Fernando, 1935)
• "Cosmopolitans" (Cosmopolitans - Very Short Stories, 1936)
• My South Sea Island (1936)
• "Theater" (Theater, 1937)
• “Summing Up” (The Summing Up, 1938, Russian translation 1957)
• "Christmas Holiday", (Christmas Holiday, 1939)
• “Princess September and The Nightingale” (1939)
• "France at War" (France At War, 1940)
• Books and You (1940)
• "According to the same recipe" (The Mixture As Before, 1940)
• “Up at the Villa” (1941)
• "Very Personal" (Strictly Personal, 1941)
• The Hour Before Dawn (1942)
• The Unconquered (1944)
• "The Razor's Edge" (1944)
• “Then and now. A Novel about Niccolò Machiavelli" (Then and Now, 1946)
• Of Human Bondage - An Address (1946)
• "Toys of Fate" (Creatures of Circumstance, 1947)
• "Catalina" (Catalina, 1948)
• Quartet (1948)
• Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948)
• “A Writer’s Notebook” (1949)
• Trio (1950)
• The Writer's Point of View" (1951)
• Encore (1952)
• The Vagrant Mood (1952)
• The Noble Spaniard (1953)
• Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954)
• "Point of View" (Points of View, 1958)
• Purely For My Pleasure (1962)
• The Force of Circumstance ("Selected Short Stories")
• "Shipwreck" (Flotsam and Jetsam, "Selected Short Stories")
• The Creative Impulse("Selected Short Stories")
• Virtue("Selected Short Stories")
• The Treasure("Selected Short Stories")
• In a Strange Land("Selected Short Stories")
• The Consul("Selected Short Stories")
• "Exactly a Dozen" (The Round Dozen, "Selected Short Stories")
• Footprints in the Jungle, Selected Short Stories
• "A Friend In Need"

William Somerset Maugham - British writer, playwright, literary critic, screenwriter. One of the most successful prose writers of the twentieth century. Recipient of the Companion of Honor, Britain's most important award for achievements in the arts and literature. He has 78 works to his credit. Film adaptations of the novels by Somerset Maugham and theatrical performances His plays are still a huge success. The works do not lose their relevance due to light irony, English humor and psychologism. Maugham also wrote stories, essays and travel notes. We have collected most important works authors you should definitely get to know.

Maugham was born into the family of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France. The birth was specially organized on the premises of the British Embassy so that the child would receive British citizenship. The writer's grandfather, father and brother were outstanding lawyers and prophesied the same fate for little William.

For the first 10 years of his life, Maugham spoke only French. On English spoke only after returning to England. This event was overshadowed by the death of both parents, which caused Somerset to stutter. The illness remained with him until the end of his life.

During World War I, Maugham served as a British intelligence agent. On instructions from MI5, he went to Russia to prevent that country from leaving the war. He spent four months in Moscow and returned to his homeland during the events of the October Revolution, failing the mission.

Literary field

In 1915, the largely autobiographical novel “The Burden of Human Passions” was published. Main character repeated the writer's fate. He was orphaned early, deprived of the support and love of his loved ones. However, in the end he managed to find his place in life and found peace of mind. This was followed by the novels “The Moon and a Penny” (1919), “Pies and Wine” (1930), “The Razor’s Edge” (1944).

Pay special attention to the novel “Theater” (1937) - this is an ironic story of the life of a talented actress. She is going through a midlife crisis, falls in love with her young admirer, and is looking for peace of mind and eventually comes to the realization that what is most valuable in life. The novel is life-affirming and light. The film adaptation of this novel by Maugham (dir. István Szabó, 2004) was nominated for an Oscar. Performer leading role Annette Bening won the Golden Globe for Best Actress.

A year later, autobiographical notes “Summing Up” (1938) were published. In this book, Maugham shares his writing experience and, in a unique ironic manner, talks about the difficulties and joys of literary activity. The book allows you to look at Maugham's work with different eyes.

Summing up

William Somerset Maugham (English: William Somerset Maugham, born January 25, 1874, Paris - December 16, 1965, Nice) - British writer, one of the most successful prose writers of the 1930s, author of 78 books, British intelligence agent.

Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris, in the family of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France.

The parents specially prepared for the birth on the territory of the embassy so that the child would have legal grounds to say that he was born in Great Britain: it was expected that a law would be passed according to which all children born on French territory would automatically become French citizens and thus, upon reaching adulthood, would be sent to front in case of war.

His grandfather, Robert Maugham, was at one time a famous lawyer, one of the co-organizers of the English Law Society. Both William Maugham's grandfather and father predicted his fate as a lawyer. Although William Maugham himself did not become a lawyer, his elder brother Frederick, later Viscount Maugham, enjoyed a legal career and served as Lord Chancellor (1938-1939).

As a child, Maugham spoke only French, mastered English only after he was orphaned at the age of 10 (his mother died of consumption in February 1882, his father (Robert Ormond Maugham) died of stomach cancer in June 1884) and was sent to relatives in The English town of Whitstable in Kent, six miles from Canterbury.

Upon arrival in England, Maugham began to stutter - this remained for the rest of his life.

“I was short; hardy, but not physically strong; I stuttered, was shy and in poor health. I had no inclination for sport, which occupies such an important place in English life; and - either for one of these reasons, or from birth - I instinctively avoided people, which prevented me from getting along with them,” he said.

Since William was brought up in the family of Henry Maugham, a vicar in Whitstable, he began his studies at the Royal School in Canterbury. Then he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg - in Heidelberg, Maugham wrote his first work - a biography of the composer Meyerbeer (when it was rejected by the publisher, Maugham burned the manuscript).

Then he entered medical school (1892) at St. Thomas in London - this experience is reflected in Maugham's first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897). Maugham's first success in the field of literature came with the play Lady Frederick (1907).

During the First World War, he collaborated with MI5 and was sent to Russia as an agent of British intelligence to prevent it from withdrawing from the war. Arrived there by ship from the USA, to Vladivostok. He was in Petrograd from August to November 1917, meeting several times with Alexander Kerensky, Boris Savinkov and other political figures. Left Russia due to the failure of his mission (October Revolution) through Sweden.

The intelligence officer’s work was reflected in the collection of 14 short stories “Ashenden, or the British Agent” (1928, Russian translations - 1929 and 1992).

After the war Maugham continued successful career playwright, writing the plays “The Circle” (1921), “Sheppey” (1933). Maugham's novels were also successful - “The Burden of Human Passions” (19159), an almost autobiographical novel, “The Moon and the Penny,” “Pies and Beer” (1930), “Theater” (1937), “The Razor’s Edge” (1944).

In July 1919, Maugham, in pursuit of new impressions, went to China, and later to Malaysia, which gave him material for two collections of stories.

The villa at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera was purchased by Maugham in 1928 and became one of the great literary and social salons and the writer's home for the rest of his life. Winston Churchill sometimes visited the writer, and occasionally Soviet writers were there. His work continued to expand with plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books.

By 1940, Somerset Maugham had already become one of the most famous and wealthy writers of English fiction. Maugham did not hide the fact that he writes “not for the sake of money, but in order to get rid of the ideas, characters, types that haunt his imagination, but, at the same time, he does not mind at all if creativity provides him, among other things, with the opportunity to write what he wants and to be his own boss.”

In 1944, Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge was published. For most of the Second World War, Maugham, who was already over sixty, was in the United States - first in Hollywood, where he worked a lot on scripts, making amendments to them, and later in the South.

In 1947, the writer approved the Somerset Maugham Prize, which was awarded to the best English writers under the age of thirty-five.

Maugham gave up traveling when he felt that it had nothing more to offer him. “I had nowhere to change further. The arrogance of culture left me. I accepted the world as it is. I have learned tolerance. I wanted freedom for myself and was ready to give it to others.” After 1948, Maugham left drama and fiction, writing essays mainly on literary topics.

The last lifetime publication of Maugham’s work, autobiographical notes “A Look into the Past,” was published in the fall of 1962 in the pages of the London Sunday Express.

Somerset Maugham died on December 15, 1965, at the age of 92, in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, near Nice, from pneumonia. According to French law, patients who died in hospital were supposed to undergo an autopsy, but the writer was taken home, and on December 16 it was officially announced that he had died at home, in his villa, which became his last refuge. The writer does not have a grave as such, since his ashes were scattered under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury.

Personal life of Somerset Maugham:

Without repressing his bisexuality, in May 1917 Maugham married decorator Siri Wellcome, with whom they had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Maugham.

The marriage was not successful, and the couple divorced in 1929. In his old age, Somerset admitted: “My biggest mistake was that I imagined myself three-quarters normal and only a quarter homosexual, when in reality it was the other way around.”

Interesting facts about Somerset Maugham:

Maugham always placed his desk opposite a blank wall so that nothing would distract him from his work. He worked for three to four hours in the morning, fulfilling his self-imposed quota of 1000-1500 words.

Dying, he said: “Dying is a boring and joyless thing. My advice to you is never do this.”

"Before you write new novel“I always re-read Candide so that later I can unconsciously measure myself up to this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”

Maugham about the book “The Burden of Human Passions”: “My book is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel, where facts are strongly mixed with fiction; I experienced the feelings described in it myself, but not all the episodes happened as described, and they were taken partly not from my life, but from the lives of people who were well known to me.”

“I would not go to see my plays at all, neither on the opening night, nor on any other evening, if I did not consider it necessary to test their effect on the public, in order to learn from this how to write them.”

Novels by Somerset Maugham:

"Liza of Lambeth"
"The Making of a Saint"
"The Hero"
"Mrs Craddock"
"Carousel" (The Merry-go-round)
"The Bishop's Apron"
"The Conqueror of Africa" ​​(The Explorer)
"The Magician"
"Of Human Bondage"
"The Moon and Sixpence"
"The Painted Veil"
“Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard”
"The Narrow Corner"
"Theatre"
"Christmas Holiday"
"Villa on the Hill" (Up at the Villa)
"The Hour Before Dawn"
"The Razor's Edge"
“Then and now. A Novel about Niccolò Machiavelli" (Then and Now)
“Catalina” (Catalina, 1948; Russian translation 1988 - A. Afinogenova)