William Somerset Maugham. William Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham is a famous English novelist of the 30s, as well as an agent of English intelligence. Born and died in France. He lived a bright life long life and died at 91. Years of life: 1874-1965. Somerset Maugham's father was a lawyer at the British Embassy of France, thanks to which the writer automatically received French citizenship at birth in Paris.

At the age of 8, Somerset lost his mother, and at 10 he lost his father, after which he was sent to be raised by relatives in the city of Whitstable. Since Somerset Maugham’s grandfather, like his father, was involved in law and was the most famous lawyer at that time, the parents predicted a career for the writer in the same field. But their expectations were not met.

Somerset, after graduating from school in Canterbury, entered the University of Heidelberg, where he studied such sciences as philosophy and literature. Afterwards the writer studied at medical school at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. Somerset wrote his first manuscript while still studying at the University of Heidelberg. It was a biography of the composer Meyerbeer, but since it was not published, it was burned by the author.

Although homosexual, Maugham married decorator Siri Wellcome in May 1917, 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.”

In 1987, Somerset Maugham wrote his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth. but success came to him only in 1907 after the publication of the play “Lady Frederick”. As an intelligence officer, Somerset Maugham was an agent of British intelligence and conducted espionage in Russia. But he did not complete his mission. About this life experience the writer narrates in his work "Ashenden" ("British Agent", written in 1928. Somerset Maugham visited Malaysia, China, the USA. New countries inspired him to create different creative works. As a playwright, Somerset Maugham wrote many plays.

Some of his best works are the play "The Circle", written in 1921; "Shepi" - 1933; novel "Pies and Beer" - 1930; "Theater" - 1937 and many other works. This text outlined the biography of Somerset Maugham. Of course, all the life situations of this brightest figure were not fully covered, but the main stages were reflected, which allows us to draw a certain picture about this individual.

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 willing 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 the 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 final 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.

Interesting facts:
- 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 writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I can unconsciously measure myself by this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”
- Maugham about the book “The Burden of Human Passions”: “My book is not an autobiography, but autobiographical novel, where facts are tightly 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 wouldn’t go to see my plays at all, neither on the opening night, nor on any other evening, if I didn’t consider it necessary to test their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them.”

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

Being born in Paris could not but affect the child. 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 the sudden death of his mother Edith from 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 reason ridicule.

Therefore, moving to Germany in 1890 to study atHeidelberg University 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 essay 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 or 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. He would subsequently receive a diploma as a physician and surgeon (October 1897), 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.

We will later see the period of life associated with his medical career in his novel “Lisa of Lambeth,” which was published by"Fischer An Win" will be released 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 The Avenue Theater will perform the play 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 of different levels of government. 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. etc.

Later, S. Maugham would write that this idea was doomed to failure in advance 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 moment was Maugham’s writing of a collection of stories “Ashenden or British Agent” (original title “Ashenden or 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 the autobiographical novel “The Burden of Human Passions” (1915). Writers of that time like Thomas Wolfe and Theodore Dreiser recognized the novel as brilliant.

During the same period of time, Maugham gravitated towards a new direction for him - socio-psychological drama. Examples of such works are “The Unknown” (1920), “For Merit” (1932), “Sheppie” (1933).

When World War II began, 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. The same sentiments permeate his book “France at War” (1940). 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” (1946), “Catalina” (1948), the writer talks about power and its influence on people, about rulers and their policies, and pays attention to true patriotism. In these novels we see a new style of writing novels; there is a lot of tragedy in them.

“The Razor's Edge” (1944) 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 last years The writer is immersed 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 characters 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 Changeable Moods was published, consisting of six essays, where we see memories of such novelists as G. James, G. Wells and A. Bennett, with whom Somerset Maugham was personally acquainted.

On December 15, 1965, the writer passed away. This happened in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (a city in 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.

Biography

"I was not born a writer, I became one." Sixty-five years is the period of literary activity of the venerable English author: prose writer, playwright, essayist, literary critic Somerset Maugham. Maugham found eternal values ​​that could give meaning to the life of an individual mortal in Beauty and Goodness. Associated by birth and upbringing with the upper middle class, it was this class and its morality that he made the main target of his caustic irony. One of the wealthiest writers of his time, he denounced the power of money over man. Maugham is easy to read, but behind this ease lies painstaking work on style, high professionalism, culture of thought and words. The writer invariably opposed the deliberate complexity of the form, the deliberate obscurity of the expression of thought, especially in those cases when the obscurity “...dresses itself in the clothes of aristocracy.” “The style of a book should be simple enough so that anyone with any education can read it with ease...” - he embodied these recommendations in his own work all his life.

The writer, William Somerset Maugham, was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris. The writer's father was a co-owner of a law firm and a legal attaché at the British Embassy. Mother, famous beauty, ran a salon that attracted many celebrities from the world of art and politics. In the novel Summing Up, Maugham says about his parents: “She was extremely beautiful woman, and he is an extremely ugly man. I was told that in Paris they were called Beauty and the Beast."

The parents carefully thought through the birth of Maugham. In France, a law was being prepared according to which all young men born in the territory of this country were subject to compulsory conscription into the army upon reaching adulthood. It was impossible to admit the thought that their son, an Englishman by blood, would fight on the side of the French against his compatriots in a couple of decades. This could be avoided in one way - the birth of a child on the territory of the embassy, ​​which legally means birth on the territory of England.

William was the fourth child in the Somerset family. As a child, the boy spoke only French, but he began to learn English only after he was suddenly orphaned. When Maugham was just eight years old, in February 1882, Maugham's mother died of consumption. And two years later, my father passed away due to stomach cancer. The mother's maid became William's nanny; The boy took the death of his parents very hard.

In the English city of Whitstable, in the county of Kent, lived William's uncle, Henry Maugham, a parish priest, who sheltered the boy. It was not the best time in young Maugham's life. His uncle turned out to be a rather callous person. It was difficult for the boy to establish relationships with new relatives, because... he didn't own in English speech. Constant stress in the home of Puritan relatives caused William to become ill: he began to stutter, and Maugham retained this throughout his life.

Maugham about himself: “I was small in stature; hardy, but not physically strong; I stuttered, was shy and in poor health. I had no inclination for sports, which occupies such an important place in the life of the English; and - either for one of these reasons, or from birth - I instinctively avoided people, which prevented me from getting along with them."

The Royal School in Canterbury, where William studied, also became a test for young Maugham: he was constantly teased for his poor English and short stature, inherited from his father. The reader can get an idea about these years of his life from two novels - “The Burden of Human Passions” (1915) and “Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet” (1929).

Moving to Germany to attend Heidelberg University was for Maugham an escape from the difficult life in Canterbury. At the university, Maugham begins to study literature and philosophy. Here he improves his English. It was at Heidelberg University that Maugham wrote his first work, a biography of the German composer Meerbeer. But the manuscript was rejected by the publisher, and a disappointed Maugham decides to burn it. Maugham was then 17 years old.

At the insistence of his uncle, Somerset returns to England and gets a job as an accountant, but after a month of work the young man quits and goes back to Whitstable. A career in the church sphere was also unattainable for William - due to a speech impediment. That's why future writer I decided to devote myself entirely to my studies and my calling – literature.

In 1892, Somerset entered medical school at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. He continued to study and worked at night on his new creations. In 1897, Maugham received a diploma as a physician and surgeon; worked at St. Thomas's Hospital in a poor area of ​​London. The writer reflected this experience in his first novel, “Lisa of Lambeth” (1897). The book was popular among experts and the public, and the first printings sold out within weeks. This was enough to convince Maugham to leave medicine and become a writer.

In 1903, Maugham wrote the first play, “A Man of Honor,” and later five more plays were written—“Lady Frederick” (1907), “Jack Straw” (1908), “Smith” (1909), “Nobility” (1910), “ Loaves and Fishes (1911), which were staged in London and then in New York.

By 1914, Somerset Maugham was already quite a famous person thanks to his plays and novels. The moral and aesthetic criticism of the bourgeois world in almost all of Maugham’s works is a very subtle, caustic and ironic debunking of snobbery, based on a careful selection of characteristic words, gestures, traits appearance and psychological reactions of the character.

When the First World War began, Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross, in the so-called Literary Ambulance Drivers, a group of 23 famous writers. Employees of the famous British intelligence MI5 decide to use the famous writer and playwright for their own purposes. Maugham agreed to carry out a delicate mission for intelligence, which he later described in his autobiographical notes and in the collection “Ashenden, or the British Agent” (1928). Alfred Hitchcock used several passages from this text in the film The Secret Agent (1936). Maugham was sent to a number of European countries for secret negotiations with the goal of preventing them from leaving the war. For the same purpose, and also with the task of helping the Provisional Government stay in power, he arrived in Russia after the February Revolution. Not without a fair amount of self-irony, Maugham, already at the end of his journey, wrote that this mission was thankless and obviously doomed, and he himself was a useless “missionary”.

The special agent's further path lay in the United States. There the writer met a man for whom the writer 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 his personal secretary and lover. Maugham was bisexual. The writer, Beverly Nicolet, one of his old friends, testifies: "Maugham was not a 'pure' homosexual. He, of course, had affairs with women, and there were no signs of feminine behavior or feminine manners."

Maugham: “Let those who like me accept me as I am, and let the rest not accept me at all.”

Maugham had affairs with famous women - with Violet Hunt, a famous feminist, editor of the magazine "Free Woman"; with Sasha Kropotkin, daughter of Peter Kropotkin, a famous Russian anarchist who was living in exile in London at the time.

But only two women played an important role in Maugham's life. The first was Ethelwyn Jones, daughter of the famous playwright, better known as Sue Jones. Maugham loved her very much. He 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 already happy with the 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, the son of the Earl of Antrim. Soon she married him.

Another woman writer was Cyrie Barnardo Wellcome; her father was widely known for founding a network of shelters for homeless children. Maugham met her in 1911. Sairi already had experience of an unsuccessful family life. After some time, Cyri and Maugham were already inseparable. They had a daughter, whom they named Elizabeth. Sairee's husband found out about her relationship with Maugham and filed for divorce. Sairi attempted suicide, but survived. When Cyrie divorced, Maugham did what he considered the only correct way out of the situation: he married her. Cyri actually loved Maugham, and he quickly lost interest in her. 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 did not marry you because that he loved you so much, and you know it very well.” Soon Maugham and Siri began to live separately. She became famous artist on interiors. A few years later, Sayri filed for divorce, and was granted it in 1929.

Maugham: “I have loved many women, but I have never known the bliss of mutual love.”

Throughout this time, Maugham did not stop writing.

A real breakthrough was the almost autobiographical novel “On Human Slavery” (Russian translation of “The Burden of Human Passions”, 1915), which is considered Maugham’s best work. The original title of the book, "Beauty for Ashes" (a quote from the prophet Isaiah), was previously used by someone and therefore was replaced. “On Human Slavery” is the title of one of the chapters of Spinoza’s Ethics.

The novel initially received unfavorable reviews from critics in both America and England. Only the influential critic and writer, Theodore Dreiser, appreciated the new novel, calling it a work of genius and even comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. This summary elevated the book to unprecedented heights– since then this novel has been published without interruption. The close relationship between the fictional and the non-fictional became Maugham's trademark. A little later, in 1938, he admitted: “Reality and fiction are so mixed up in my work that now, looking back, I can hardly distinguish one from the other.”

In 1916, Maugham traveled to Polynesia to collect material for his future novel The Moon and the Penny (1919), based on the biography of Paul Gauguin. “I found beauty and romance, but I also found something I never expected: a new me.” These travels were to forever establish the writer in the popular imagination as a chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific.

In 1922, Maugham appeared on Chinese television with his book of 58 mini-stories collected during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong.

Somerset Maugham never, even when he was already a recognized master, allowed himself to present to the public a “raw” piece or, for some reason, that did not satisfy him. He followed hard realistic principles composition and character construction, which he considered most consistent with the nature of his talent: “The plot that the author tells must be clear and convincing; it must have a beginning, middle and end, and the end must naturally follow from the beginning... Just like behavior and the character's speech must follow from his character."

In the twenties, Maugham continued his successful career as a playwright. His plays include "The Circle" (1921) - a satire on society, "Our Best" (1923) - about Americans in Europe, and "The Constant Wife" (1927) - about a wife who takes revenge on her unfaithful husband, and "Sheppie" (1933) – staged in Europe and the USA.

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, as well as the home for the rest of the writer's life. Winston Churchill and Herbert Wells sometimes visited the writer, and occasionally Soviet writers also came here. 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 hard on scripts, making amendments to them, and later in the South.

His longtime collaborator and lover, Gerald Haxton, died in 1944; after which Maugham moved to England and then, in 1946, to his villa in France, where he lived in between frequent and lengthy travel. After losing Haxton, Maugham resumes his intimate relationship with Alan Searle, a kind young man from the slums of London. Maugham first met him back in 1928, when he worked in a charity organization at a hospital. Alan becomes the writer's new secretary. Searle adored Maugham, and William had only warm feelings for him. In 1962, Maugham formally adopted Alan Searle, denying the right of inheritance to his daughter Elizabeth, because he had heard rumors that she was going to limit his rights to the property through the courts, due to his incompetence. Elizabeth, through the court, 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.

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 flew away from me. I accepted the world as it is. I learned tolerance. I wanted freedom for myself and was ready to provide it to others.” After 1948, Maugham left drama and fiction, writing essays mainly on literary topics.

“An artist has no reason to treat other people condescendingly. He is a fool if he imagines that his knowledge is somehow more important, and a cretin if he does not know how to approach every person as an equal.” These and other similar statements in the book “Summing Up” (1938), later sounded in such essayistic-autobiographical works as “ Notebook writer" (1949) and "Points of View" (1958), could infuriate the self-satisfied "priests of the elegant", boasting of their belonging to the ranks of the chosen and initiated.

The last lifetime publication of Maugham's work, autobiographical notes "A Look into the Past", was published in the fall of 1962 on 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 the 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 final 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. One might say, this is how he was immortalized, reuniting him forever with his life’s work.

His best books, which have stood the test of time and ensured his place among the classics of English literature of the 20th century, pose large, universal and philosophical problems.

Interesting facts from life

* “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 wrote several one-act plays and sent them to theaters. Some of them were never returned to him; the rest, disappointed in them, he destroyed himself.
* “Before writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I can unconsciously measure up to this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”
* “When the English intelligentsia became interested in Russia, I remembered that Cato began to study Greek at the age of eighty, 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 that was a little What I knew then has long been forgotten."
* Maugham about Russia: “Endless conversations where action was required; hesitation; apathy leading directly to disaster; pompous declarations, insincerity and lethargy that I observed everywhere - all this pushed me away from Russia and the Russians.”
* Four of Maugham's plays were performed in London at the same time; this created his fame. Bernard Partridge's cartoon appeared in Punch, which depicted Shakespeare languishing with envy in front of posters with the writer's name.
* 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; the feelings described in it, I experienced myself, but not all the episodes happened as they are told, and they were taken partly not from my life, but from the lives of people well known to me.”
* “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 as I built a play, a novel out of the people I met here and there or a story."

Writer's Awards

* Order of the Knights of Honor - 1954

Bibliography

Novels:

* Lisa of Lambeth (1897)
* Magician (1908)
* The Burden of Human Passions (1915)
* Moon and Penny (1919)
* Trembling Leaf (1921)
* On a Chinese Screen (1922)
* Patterned Veil (Painted Veil) (1925)
* Casuarina (1926)
* Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928) Collection of short stories
* Gingerbread and Ale (Pies and Beer, or Skeleton in the Closet) (1930)
* Tight Corner (Small Corner) (1932)
* Theater (1937)
* Summing Up (1938)
* Christmas Vacation (1939)
* Same recipe (1940)
* At the Villa (Villa on the Hill, At the Upper Villa) (1941)
* Razor's Edge (1944)
* Then and Now (1946)
* Toys of Fate (1947)
* Catalina (1948)
* Mrs Craddock

Plays:

* A Man of Honor [A Decent Man] (1898)
* Researcher
* Lady Frederick (1907)
* Jack Straw (Jack Straw) (1908)
* Smith (1909)
* Mrs. Dot
* Penelope
* Nobility (1910)
* Loaves and Fishes (1911)
* Those Above Us (1915)
* Circle (1921)
* The Faithful Wife (1927)
* Landowners
* Tenth man
* Promised Land
* Sheppey (1933)
* Sacred Fire (1933)

Novels:

* Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928)
* In lion's skin

Novels, stories:

* Drop of native blood
* Force of circumstances
*Going to visit
* Spell
* Consul
* Taipan
* Casuarina
* Pacific Ocean
* On a Chinese screen
* Backwater
* Leaf flutter
* Vessel of Wrath
* Gigolo and gigolette
* Rain
* Exactly a dozen
* Something human
* Hairless Mexican
* Mr. Harrington's underwear
*God's judgment
* Marriage of convenience
* Appearance and reality
* Having tasted nirvana
* Return
* Honolulu
* A note
* Source of inspiration
* The end of the world
* Louise
* Mackintosh
* Mr. Know-It-All
* Mayhew
* On the outskirts of the empire
* Unconquered
* Beggar
*The Fall of Edward Barnard
* Poet
* Ginger
* Salvatore
* Sanatorium
* Vessel of Wrath
* Dragonfly and ant
* Ant and grasshopper
* Bag with books
* Church minister
* The Man with the Scar
* Sense of decency
* Carousel

Essay

* Summing up (1938, Russian translation 1957)
* A Writer's Notebook (1949)
* Ten Novelists and Their Novels (1954)
* Points of View (1958)
* Hindsight (1962)

Screen adaptations of works, theatrical performances

* The Painted Veil (1934) (2006)
* Theater (1978) (2004)
* In the villa (2000)
* Change of fate (1987)
* Razor's Edge (1984)
* Overnight Sensation (1983)
* Gigolo and Gigoletta (TV) (1980)
* True stories (TV series) (1979–1988)
* The Burden of Human Passions (1934) (1946) (1964)
* Charming Julia (1962)
* The Seventh Sin (1957)
* Miss Sadie Thompson (1953)
* Night theater(TV series) (1950–1959)
* Trio (1950)
* On the Edge of the Blade (1946)
* Christmas Vacation (1944)
* The Moon and the Sixpence (1942)
* Letter (1929) (1940)
* Too Many Husbands (1940)
* Vessel of Wrath (1938)
* A new dawn (1937)
* Secret Agent (1936)
* Rain (1932)
* Sadie Thompson (1928)
* East of Suez (1925)

Biography

English writer. Born January 25, 1874 in Paris. His father was co-owner of a law firm there and legal attaché at the British Embassy. His mother, a famous beauty, ran a salon that attracted many celebrities from the world of art and politics. At the age of ten, the boy was orphaned and he was sent to England, to his uncle, a priest. Eighteen-year-old Maugham spent a year in Germany, and a few months after his return he entered the medical school at St. Thomas. In 1897 he received a diploma as a general practitioner and surgeon, but never practiced medicine: while still a student, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), which absorbed impressions from his student practice in this area of ​​London slums. The book was well received, and Maugham decided to become a writer.

For ten years his success as a prose writer was very modest, but after 1908 he began to gain fame: his four plays - Jack Straw (1908), Smith (Smith, 1909), Landed Gentry (1910), Bread and fishes (Loaves and Fishes, 1911) – were staged in London and then in New York. Since the beginning of the First World War, Maugham served in the sanitary unit. Later he was transferred to the intelligence service, he visited France, Italy, Russia, as well as America and the islands of the South Pacific. The work of a secret agent was vividly reflected in his collection of short stories, Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928). After the war, Maugham continued to travel widely. Maugham died in Nice (France) on December 16, 1965. A prolific writer, Somerset Maugham created 25 plays, 21 novels and more than 100 short stories, but none literary genre he was not an innovator.

His famous comedies, such as The Circle (1921), The Constant Wife (1927), do not deviate from the canons of the English “well-made play.” In fictional prose, be it large or small form, he sought to present the plot and strongly disapproved of the sociological or any other orientation of the novel. Maugham's best novels are the largely autobiographical Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale (1930); exotic The Moon and Sixpence (1919), inspired by the fate of the French artist P. Gauguin; the story of the southern seas The Narrow Corner, 1932; The Razor's Edge, 1944). After 1948, Maugham left drama and fiction, writing essays, mainly on literary topics. The rapid intrigue, brilliant style and masterful composition of the story brought him the fame of the “English Maupassant.”

WILLIAM SOMERSET MAWHAM: THE EDGE OF TALENT (G. E. Ionkis, (Maugham W. S. Summing up. - M., 1991. - P. 7-25))

“The greatest advantage of old age is spiritual freedom,” Maugham wrote on his seventieth birthday. Fate decreed that he could enjoy this advantage for quite a long time. Looking back over the ninety years he had lived, Maugham came to the conclusion that he had always lived for the future. He could not free himself from this habit even when the future took on the shape of non-existence for him.

The creative longevity of the English writer is impressive: having begun his journey at the time of the growing fame of the late Victorians - T. Hardy, R. Kipling, O. Wilde, he ended it when the “angry ones” had died down and new stars appeared on the literary horizon - W. Golding and A. Murdoch, J. Fowles and M. Spark.

What is striking is not the length of time allotted to him, but the fact that at every turn of rapidly changing historical times, from the 90s of the past to the 50s of this century, Maugham the artist remained extremely modern.

The answer to this phenomenon should be sought first of all in the fact that in his best works Maugham raised great problems of a universal human and general philosophical nature, as well as in his amazing sensitivity to the tragic beginning, so characteristic of life in the 20th century, to the hidden drama of characters and human relations. It is strange that at the same time he was most often reproached for dispassion, coldness of heart, and even cynicism. He, following the idol of his youth, Maupassant, could say: “I am, without a doubt, considered one of the most indifferent people in the world. I am a skeptic, this is not the same thing, a skeptic, because I have good eyes. the eyes tell my heart: hide, old man, you are funny. And the heart hides."

It is difficult to dispel the prevailing misconception, but without abandoning bias, one cannot understand the artist. Maugham was not indifferent to people: neither when he chose medicine as his profession, nor when he abandoned it for the sake of writing. Of all his interests and inclinations, the most enduring was his interest in people. “You can write about a person all your life and still say negligible little,” Maugham never tired of repeating. Traveling around the world, he was not so much fascinated by the sights as he was looking for interesting, original people. “What was good in people made me happy; what was bad in them did not lead me to despair,” Maugham admitted. He put his opinion about the human race into the mouth of the hero of one of the stories: “People’s hearts are right, but their heads are no good.” Is Maugham wrong? Object, argue with him. He's honest, and that's what's important.

Now Maugham is recognized in the world as the most widely read English writer after Dickens. However, in English literature courses and the solid academic works of his compatriots, Maugham's work is not given the attention it deserves. He often secretly polemicized against academic literary criticism, and his references to “groups,” “cliques,” and “elites” only strengthened his position as an outsider. Moreover, the unprecedented commercial success clearly damaged his reputation in academic literary circles. The four million he earned with his pen created an invisible wall between him and his fellow craftsmen.

Maugham was painfully worried that the “intelligentsia” (in retaliation, he put this word in quotation marks, meaning “highbrow” intellectuals) did not take him seriously. He was irritated by unfair accusations of pandering to the general public. He did not adapt to anyone; he always had a desire for independence.

At one time, Dreiser promised him a great future. However, the title of Great Businessman of English Literature also came with creative losses. They were pointed out not only by ill-wishers, but also by loyal admirers like Thomas Wolfe. Maugham himself, in his declining years, experienced a bitter feeling that the great contemporaries whom he had outlived had passed him by. Not envying their glory, but jealously looking at other people's achievements, objectively assessing them, he was sometimes annoyed with himself.

We find interesting evidence on this matter from Yuri Nagibin, perhaps the only Soviet writer who was lucky enough to be received at the Morisco villa on the Riviera, where Maugham spent a good half of his life and where he died completely alone. "Morisco", where celebrities, princes of the blood and prominent political figures visited (Maugham was friends with Churchill), is part of the legend about the writer. The villa was his fortress, but he did not take refuge in it for long. Maugham was not one of the writers who observed life from a window.

Nagibin was quite struck by the dandyism of the ninety-year-old man, but even more by the contrast between his physical frailty and the strength and liveliness of his thoughts. The Russian guest marveled at the rare combination of calm dignity, childish excitement and poisonous sarcasm with which Maugham spoke about the writing that still worried him. The late Jean Giraudoux was mentioned in the conversation. “I’m angry with him, I can’t forgive that he wrote “Electra” and not me,” said Maugham. “The play about the Trojan War is even better, but I don’t envy - I can’t write something like that. (...) And “I could have written Electra, but I wrote it to Giraudoux, leaving me without a better play.” This unexpected outbreak speaks of high demands on oneself and an understanding of the limits of one’s capabilities. One can argue about Maugham's place in literature, but one thing is certain: writing was the only activity in which he believed infinitely and completely. Devoting himself entirely to literature, he became a true Master.

Maugham consistently and methodically erected the building of his success, guided by a strictly thought-out plan. He easily and freely moved from one literary type and genre to another, achieving perfection in each. The case is unique if we recall Shaw’s experiments in the field of the novel and Flaubert’s equally unsuccessful attempts in drama. Twenty novels, about three dozen plays, many collections of stories, travel and autobiographical books, critical essays, articles, prefaces - this is the result of this life.

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 into the family of a successful hereditary lawyer, who at that time served in the English embassy in Paris. An Englishman born in France who spoke predominantly French until the age of ten—isn’t this a paradox? There will be many of them in his life. Maugham graduated from primary school in France, and his classmates will make fun of his English for a long time when he finds himself on the other side of the English Channel. It is not surprising that he will never feel completely at home in England. “I was embarrassed by the English” is the confession of an adult.

Childhood impressions determine a lot in life. The French childhood of Maugham, the youngest in the family, passed in an atmosphere of goodwill, affectionate care and tender love emanating from his mother. He was eight years old when she died.

At the age of ten, Maugham lost his father and was given to the care of his uncle. The fifty-year-old vicar was indifferent to his nephew. In his house, the boy acutely felt loneliness. It did not dissipate either at Canterbury Primary School, where three dismal years passed, or at King's School, where he continued his education. Little Maugham stuttered badly, which became the reason for endless ridicule from his peers and dull irritation from his teachers. Over time, the teenager got used to his situation, stopped being burdened by loneliness, and even began to look for it. He became addicted to reading, secretly raiding the bookcases in the vicar's office.

The health condition of his nephew, who grew up as a sickly child, forced the guardian to send Willy 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 was amazing, his theory musical drama opened unknown distances, Ibsen’s plays, translated into German and staged on stage, excited and broke established ideas.

Already at the university he felt his calling, but in a respectable family the position of a professional writer was considered dubious. His three older brothers were already lawyers. Maugham decides to become a doctor. In the autumn of 1892, the eighteen-year-old young man returned to England and entered medical school at St. Thomas in Lambeth - the poorest area of ​​London. Maugham later recalled: “During the years that I was practicing medicine, I systematically studied English, French, Italian and Latin literature. I read many books on history, some on philosophy and, of course, on natural science and medicine.”

Started in third year medical practice unexpectedly captivated him. Three years of hard work in hospital wards helped Maugham understand human nature much deeper than the mountains of books he read - he made a clear conclusion: “I don’t know a better school for a writer than the work of a doctor.”

In 1897, his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth, was published. The novel told about the world of the London slums, where George Gissing, the author of the novels “Declassed” (1884) and “Underworld” (1889), was the first to look into the life of the bottom from the inside. When, when Gissing was sick with tuberculosis, there was talk about ascending literary star, he invariably asked the question: “Has he ever starved?” Maugham, having no reason to answer in the affirmative, seemed unable to count on success. Nevertheless, there was success, and critics immediately considered young author to the school of naturalism. But this was only partly true.

Naturalism, as well as aestheticism, the opposing artistic movements of the end of the century, were not very attractive to Maugham. True, Wilde admired him, and his worship of the “apostle of aestheticism” determined much in Maugham’s personal life. As an artist, he was free both from an aesthetic disdain for the prose of life and from a naturalistic relish for the dullness of everyday life.

Maugham drew from many sources, being widely read in philosophy, from Plato to modern thinkers like the neo-Hegelian Bradley and the Platonist Whitehead. Maugham's worldview has always been eclectic. It was formed at a time of widespread dissemination of newfangled idealistic concepts - Nietzscheanism, Bergsonianism. Maugham treated them, as well as Freudianism, with skepticism, while his “highbrow” contemporaries smoked incense for their new idols. Maugham initially trusted the classics more - Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Spinoza. True, he too paid a tribute to the times, succumbing in his youth to the pessimistic teachings of Schopenhauer, who imagined man as an insignificant grain of sand in the ocean. At the same time, young Maugham was carried away by the “scientific” nature of his empiricism, the doctrines of the positivists and pragmatic ethics. “Fundamental Principles,” Spencer’s classic of positivism, became his reference book for some time. His interest in positivism brought him closer to the school of “new realism.” As for artistic reference points, the beacons of the aspiring writer were the great French realists XIX c., and the main teacher was Maupassant.

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

The appearance of Maugham's novel was preceded by loud scandal, caused by T. Hardy's novel "Jude the Obscure" (1896). The indignant ardor of critics who accused Hardy of naturalism was thoroughly spent, and Maugham's debut was relatively calm. Moreover, the tragic story of the girl, told with stern truthfulness, without a hint of sentimentality, was a success. And yet, the greatest success awaited the aspiring writer in a different field - the theatrical field.

In less than ten years, Maugham became a famous playwright. His first one-act plays were rejected. In 1902, one of them - “Marriages are made in heaven” - was staged in Berlin. It never got around to being staged in England, although Maugham published the play in the small magazine "Adventure".

The beginning of great success was laid by the comedy "Lady Frederic" (1903), which was staged in 1907 by Court-Tietre. During the 1908 season, four of Maugham's plays were performed in London. Along with entertaining comedies, Maugham also created acutely critical plays in the pre-war years: “The Cream of Society”, “Smith”, “The Promised Land”, which raised themes of social inequality, hypocrisy and corruption of representatives of the highest echelons of power.

Maugham recalls that the reaction to his plays was mixed: “Public newspapers praised the plays for their wit, gaiety and stage presence, but scolded them for their cynicism; more serious critics were merciless towards them. They called them cheap, vulgar, told me that I had sold my soul Mammon. And the intelligentsia, which previously counted me as their humble 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.

The war, which split the picture of time in two, also changed the course of Maugham’s life. No, everyday life at the front was never revealed to him. Unlike his compatriots, the young poets and prose writers R. Aldington, R. Graves, Z. Sassoon, he was not in the line of fire. He was briefly in a medical battalion and then joined British Intelligence. Carrying out her assignments, he worked in Switzerland for a year, and then was sent on a secret mission to Russia. At first, Maugham perceived this kind of activity, like Kipling’s Kim, as participation in the “great game,” but later, when talking about it (collection “Ashenden, or the British Agent,” 1928), he was the first to call espionage not only dirty, but also boring work and will dispel the aura of false romance around the activities of the Intelligence Service.

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, he singled out Savinkov as a large, outstanding personality. Having received a secret assignment from Kerensky to Lloyd George, Maugham left for London on October 18, not expecting that exactly a week later a revolution would break out and his mission would lose any meaning. Not at all regretting his fiasco, subsequently making fun of the fate of the unsuccessful agent, Maugham was grateful to fate for the “Russian adventure.”

Russia has long attracted him as a writer. He discovered Russian literature as a child when he came across Anna Karenina. Re-reading the novel later, he found it filled with inexplicable power, but somewhat heavy. “Fathers and Sons” remained misunderstood due to ignorance of the Russian historical situation. In general, Turgenev's novels did not touch him deeply; their idealism seemed sentimental, and the originality of the stylistic manner was lost in translation. "Crime and Punishment" shocked Maugham, and he greedily attacked Dostoevsky's novels. He recalled that in comparison with them everything else faded, the greatest Western European novels began to seem artificial, cold, and formal. The “madness” lasted until he discovered Chekhov, who turned out to be deeply related to him in spirit. The impression was so deep that he even began to study Russian in order to read Chekhov in the original. “Chekhov will tell you more about Russians than Dostoevsky,” he later wrote.

The years between the two world wars were filled with intense writing and travel (not counting two years spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium), which gave him inexhaustible material for creativity. He performs in several genres at once: as a novelist, playwright, short story writer, feature writer, essayist. His comedies and dramas compete on stage with the plays of B. Shaw.

Maugham had true "stage instinct." Plays came to him with amazing ease. They are full of winning roles, originally constructed, the dialogue in them is sharp and witty.

In the post-war period, significant changes occurred in Maugham's dramaturgy. Without losing his graceful lightness and dynamism, his comedies acquire greater poignancy. The comedy "The Circle" (1921) sharply criticized the immorality of high society. Still paying great attention to the plot, but at the same time abandoning the intricacy of plot moves, Maugham limits the action to the framework of one family. Betrayal, calculation, hypocrisy, lack of deep feelings and responsibility towards children, inability to be happy and give happiness to another - this is what Maugham blames his heroes for, whose lives pass as if in a bad cycle, where children repeat the sad fate of their parents.

Maugham is increasingly drawn to psychological drama, acting in it not as a skeptical observer, but as a caring judge who prefers exposure from the inside to open invective. He was one of the first to touch upon the tragedy of the “lost generation” (“The Unknown”, 1920). The hero of the play is a front-line soldier. The cruelty and senselessness of the war turned him into an apostate. He comes into conflict with his family, his fiancée, and the inhabitants of his hometown. The play gradually reveals the criminal alliance of the sword and the cross.

The atmosphere of the “roaring thirties” - a deep economic crisis, the growing threat of fascism and a new world war - determined the social sound of his last plays “For Special Merit” (1932) and “Sheppie” (1933). The anti-war play "On Special Merit" is a bitter commentary on the social condition that Maugham characterized as "the chaos of the post-war world."

The feeling of bitter disappointment defines the sound of the morality play Sheppey. She puzzled critics. The old Maugham was only reminiscent of farcical situations and aphoristic, polished dialogues and monologues. The playwright raised the question of the place and responsibility of a small person in a world of great political and financial passions. He approached in his own way the problem that worried the great stage innovator B. Brecht at that time. The situation of the play has something in common with the plot." kind person from Szechwan", the use of fantastic grotesque also brings them together.

In the early thirties, Maugham left dramaturgy; he voluntarily left the “conveyor belt of success.”

Speaking about his desire for excellence, Maugham named two genres in which he hoped to achieve it - the novel and the short story. His literary reputation rests on such novels as The Burden of Human Passions (1915), The Moon and Pennies (1919), and Pies and Beer, or Skeleton in the Closet (1930). Their film adaptation adds to the writer's fame.

His novels are based on a tightly constructed plot, all parts of which are proportionate. Their distinctive features are brevity (the only exception is “The Burden of Human Passions”) and simplicity. They are written without affectation; they do not contain fancy constructions, fanciful comparisons or epithets. The playwright's experience allowed him to appreciate the advantages of rapid plot development and make the novel lively and dynamic. This is precisely the secret of the entertaining nature of Maugham's prose.

The autobiographical novel "The Burden of Human Passions" is recognized as the writer's highest achievement. Written in line with the traditional “novel of education,” it is distinguished by its amazing openness and extreme sincerity in revealing the drama of the soul, and this is where its rare power lies.

Dreiser was delighted with the novel. He called Maugham a “great artist” and the book a “work of genius,” comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. There really is a certain gloomy, irresistible force in her. It does not come from the hero, who is physically rather weak, mentally naked and vulnerable. It is born from a feeling of the slow cycle of existence, the deep flow of life that captivates the hero, what the ancients called fate.

Thomas Wolfe considered The Burden of Human Passion to be one of the best novels of our time, believing that “this book was born straight from the inside, from the depths of personal experience"The ability to raise the personal to the universal is the art of a great artist.

The nature of creativity and its secrets constantly occupied Maugham. In art he saw a special world, opposed to bourgeois everyday life and decent vulgarity. He was interested in what the connection was between the morality of the creator and the fruits of his activity, between genius and villainy. Maugham was not entirely sure that these were “two incompatible things,” as Pushkin believed. These problems form the ideological core of his most popular novel, “The Moon and a Penny.” In the story of Charles Strickland you can find out the facts of Gauguin's biography, but this is not a biography of the famous French post-impressionist, but a novel about the tragic fate of a brilliant artist, about the inexplicable secret of his personality. Perhaps the veil of mystery will become a little more transparent if we consider that Mozm returns the word “genius” to its original meaning - “demon”, i.e. divine power, evil or (less often) beneficent, determining the fate of a person.

The writer has repeated more than once that the significance of a work of art depends on the scale of the personality of its creator. “The greater his talent, the more clearly expressed his individuality, the more fantastic the picture of life he painted.” The artist's personality is realized in his art, and it is judged by it.

The further development of Maugham as a novelist is increasingly connected with the understanding of ethical problems. In the novel "The Patterned Veil" (1925) he talks about the indispensable unity of Good and Beauty.

The heroine of the novel, the wife of a modest, talented bacteriologist, finding herself with him in a Chinese town lost in the jungle, receives from the French nuns nursing sick Chinese children, and to a certain extent from her husband, who saved others and died from cholera, a lesson in a life well lived. At a high price, she comes to realize the worthlessness of her own life line. The science of compassion and mercy is not easy, but only it leads the heroine to liberation from the “burden of human passions”, to moral purification and rebirth.

In the novel “Pies and Beer, or Skeleton in the Closet,” Maugham’s talent was revealed from an unexpected side: the tragic beginning gave way to the comic, and the satirical line was intricately intertwined with the lyrical one. This is a novel about the mores of literary London at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. In it, Maugham revealed the secrets of literary cuisine, ways of attracting reader attention, and ridiculed the technology of creating inflated reputations. His fellow writers were shocked by the frankness of his denunciations. For several months, literary circles in London were talking only about this book. Elroy Cyrus was easily recognized as a poisonous portrait of the then popular fiction writer, Maugham's friend Hugh Walpole. The prototype was beside himself with rage. But it’s not this fact that outraged literary world. At that time people were accustomed to this form of polemics, criticism and settling scores. The scandals caused by Aldington's Death of a Hero, Chrome Yellow (1922) and Counterpoint (1928) by O. Huxley, in the parodic images of which both T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence recognized themselves, have not yet been forgotten. and Ezra Pound, and G. Wells, and N. Douglas. But Maugham encroached on the holy of holies: in Driffield they saw a resemblance to the recently deceased Thomas Hardy. Accusations rained down from all sides. Maugham categorically denied any malicious intent: “I meant Hardy no more than George Meredith or Anatole France.” Obviously, the pompous funeral of the “last Victorian” suggested to Maugham the very idea of ​​the novel, but it was not his intention to disturb the shadow of the patriarch of literature.

Maugham loved this novel more than others, because it is autobiographical, but unlike “The Burden of Human Passions” it is filled not with bitterness, but with light sadness. The book turned out to be mischievous and prickly.

The ironic beginning, so characteristic of Pies and Beer, is intensified in the novel Theater (1937). At the center of the novel is the story of the career of the great actress Julia Lambert. Over the thirty years devoted to drama, Maugham got to know many outstanding theater and film actresses. Bette Davis, Corinna Griffiths, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swenson, Gladys Cooper played in films based on his novels. Julia Lambert is a collective image.

During Maugham’s time, a debate continued in theatrical circles, which began with Diderot’s treatise “The Paradox of the Actor”: sensitivity, emotionality or a cold mind makes an actor great; should an actor be a great individual or a blind executor of the director’s will? A supporter of Diderot, Maugham believed that only a rational, observant, outward-looking actor is capable of absorbing, evaluating and re-creating reality into art. At the same time, he did not deny the personal principle. He believed that passions that the actor does not experience himself, but observes from the side, will remain speculatively not comprehended by him to the end and in all depth.

Maugham the artist admires the great art of his heroine, but he does not hide the fact that she continues to play off stage, changing masks, actively participating in the creation of the myth of the incomparable Julia Lambert. It exposes the underside of the myth, the mechanism of its creation, and the craft of an actor itself appears as hard work multiplied by talent; it is deprived of a romantic aura.

Maugham in highest degree Shakespeare's perception of the world as a gigantic theater is inherent. His novel tells not only about acting both about great art, but also about the hypocrisy that pervades modern relationships between mother and son, husband and wife, about a farce in which the pillars of society, representatives of the intellectual elite, and the powers that be, participate. Everyone plays their own game. Maugham looks at her not from the stalls, but from behind the scenes. A shift in perspective destroys the illusion, revealing hidden motives that guide the actions of the characters.

Maugham turned seriously to the short story genre, being already a famous playwright and novelist.

His first collection, “The Trembling of the Leaf,” appeared in 1921, at a time when the short story genre gained popularity. In England, the story appeared rather late, but the reader immediately fell in love with it. These were the works of Kipling, Conan Doyle and Wells in the first place. In the 1920s, professional storytellers were K. Mansfield and A. Coppard. D.H. Lawrence, R. Aldington, O. Huxley showed interest in the story. The best short story writers of that time were influenced by Chekhov. Highly appreciating his psychologism and ability to convey atmosphere, Maugham gravitated more toward the Maupassant school. “I wanted to build my stories firmly, on one continuous line from exposition to ending... I was not afraid of what is commonly called the “highlight”... I preferred to end my stories not with an ellipsis, but with a period.” This confession by Maugham sheds light on the poetics of his stories. True, over time he turned to Chekhov’s lessons. Combining action with subtle psychologism, he reached significant heights. Over fifty years, Maugham wrote over a hundred stories, comprising seven collections. Among them there are real masterpieces: “Rain”, “The Hairless Mexican”, “Invictus”.

Maugham writes mainly about ordinary people, but extraordinary things happen to them. He makes extensive use of the element of the unexpected, which helps to reveal the fragility and relativity of socio-political values, psychological attitudes, and moral guidelines of a “decent” middle-class person.

An example of this is the now textbook story “Rain,” in which he exposes religious hypocrisy and the spiritual emptiness hidden behind it.

Over the course of his long life, Maugham observed many grimaces of chance and the ridicule of fate, and he told about them in his stories. He didn’t invent stories, he spied them from life. Maugham's strength is in understanding the complexity of man, leading to the unpredictability of his actions, in the depth of comprehension of the dialectics of the soul.

The inevitable fragmentation of impressions in short stories is compensated by Maugham’s unity of view of the world. Impression of him best stories such that the space remaining outside the boundaries of the plot appears illuminated. The general in his short stories looks through the particular.

Maugham's stories are entertaining, lively, dramatic, and often have a twist ending. Simple in form, extremely concise, devoid of pretensions to formal novelty, they conceal a strange charm, giving rise to a “harmony of authenticity.” Maugham is classic, his stories are characterized by completeness of form, his speech flows without fuss, and his novelty is rather in the point of view from which his heroes are revealed to him, “in that lyrical reflection, in that loneliness of the author’s self,” which partly makes him similar to ours. Chekhov"

Maugham was an artist who had a keen sense of the correspondence of a particular genre to the requirements of the moment, and this is also one of the reasons for his modernity. Sensing the emerging trend of merging literature and philosophy, anticipating the current “boom” of documentary, memoir, and biographical prose, he created beautiful travel essays"A Gentleman in the Drawing Room" (1930), "Don Fernando: Several Variations on a Spanish Theme" (1935) and the most "personal" book, "Summing Up" (1938).

Richard Aldington and Graham Greene admired the lively prose full of intellectual brilliance in Don Fernando, the genuine love for Spain that the pages of the book breathe, the depth of penetration into the history, culture, way of life and the very national character of the Spaniards.

Maugham's travel books are not only skillful sketches; they attract not so much with information about unfamiliar places, but with the opportunity to communicate with an experienced traveler, a witty interlocutor, a brilliant storyteller, listen to interesting stories and funny anecdotes, think about the mysteries of human nature, reflect on the secrets of creativity, for no matter what Maugham wrote about in his essays, he invariably returned to literature - the main work of his whole life.

The Second World War found Maugham in France. On instructions from the English Ministry of Information, he studies the mood of the French, spends more than a month on the Maginot Line, and visits warships in Toulon. His reports, which formed the book “France at War” (1940), breathe with the confidence that “France will fulfill its duty” and will fight to the end. Three months after its release, France fell, and Maugham, having heard that the Nazis had blacklisted his name, barely reaches England on a coal barge, and later leaves for the United States, where he lives until the end of the war.

Having made a mistake in his forecast regarding France's ability to repel Hitler, Maugham compensates for it with a sharp analysis of the situation that led to defeat (the book "Very Personal", 1941). He writes that the French government, the prosperous bourgeoisie and aristocracy behind it, and wealthy circles in general 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 riot by their own workers. Corruption corroded society, the spirit of decay took possession of the army.

Maugham was confident that the French, a brave and proud people, would free their homeland from slavery. The lesson he drew from the tragic history of France's defeat is a serious one: "If a nation values ​​something more than freedom, it will lose freedom, and the irony is that if that something is comfort or money, it will lose that too. A nation fighting for freedom ", can defend it if she possesses such values ​​as honesty, courage, loyalty, foresight and self-sacrifice. Without possessing them, she can only blame herself if she loses her freedom." The further course of the world war and the defeat of Nazi Germany in it showed the validity of Maugham’s conclusions.

Returning to the Riviera after the war, he found his house destroyed. The ancient Moorish sign, believed to protect against adversity, imprinted on the wall at the entrance to the villa and placed on the covers of his books, turned out to be powerless against modern vandalism. But the main thing is that fascism, which Maugham hated, was defeated, and life went on.

The post-war decade was fruitful for the writer. Maugham turns to the genre of historical novel for the first time. In the books “Then and Now” (1946), “Catalina” (1948), the past is read as a lesson for modernity. Maugham reflects in them on power and its impact on people, on the policies of rulers, and on noble patriotism. These latest novels written in a new manner for him, they are deeply tragic.

Maugham's last significant novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), turned out to be definitive in all respects. His idea was hatched for a long time. The plot was summarized in the story “The Fall of Edward Barnard” (1921). When asked how long it took him to write the book, Maugham replied: “All his life.” This is the result of his thoughts about the meaning of life. This is an attempt to create an image of "positive wonderful person"(Dostoevsky's expression). He becomes Larry Darrell, a young American who has been tested by the First World War. He refuses to return to his usual course and live “like everyone else,” that is, to catch his chance in the post-war era of general prosperity. “The Great American Dream “does not attract him, he is indifferent to the prospects of enrichment and this stands out sharply among his compatriots. Front-line experience encourages him to look for other values. For a long time we had the idea of ​​Maugham as an apolitical, almost asocial writer. Meanwhile, Maugham was very sensitive to social processes, and "The Razor's Edge" is another bright that certificate.

At one time, he was the first to explore the topic of the “lost generation.” Now, in the novel, the action of which ends on the eve of the Second World War, he pointed out the trends that would determine the life of the “broken generation” of the 1950-1960s (“beatism”, “hippies”, appeal to Eastern cults and systems).

Having reached an age when the need to be critical of his surroundings begins to prevail, Maugham devotes 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 throughout his long life.

Among the six essays that formed the collection Changeable Moods (1952), attention is drawn to memoirs about novelists whom he knew well - about H. James, H. Wells and A. Bennett, and an expertly written article "The Decline and Fall of the Detective ".

Maugham's last book, Points of View (1958), includes a long essay on the short story, of which he became a recognized master in the pre-war years.

Throughout his long life, Maugham expressed his views on the problems of creativity, issues of writing, and on understanding the tasks of literature.

Maugham has his own concept of the novel, short story, his own view of the theater and its tasks, his own judgments about the skill of the playwright and the role of the artist, the most interesting statements about art - all this is scattered in his numerous essays, critical and sketch prose, articles, prefaces, notes.

His criticism is sometimes subjective, but this is compensated by impeccable taste, deep intelligence, subtle irony, and breadth of approach. Maugham is true to himself: he is fascinating in all genres.

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 clarifies that by entertaining he means not what amuses, but what arouses interest. “The more intellectually entertaining a novel offers, the better it is.”

Literature should not teach, but must promote the growth of moral standards. Unlike Wilde, he perceives art and ethics in their unity. “Aesthetic experience has value only if it influences human nature and thus evokes in him an active attitude towards life” - this is an entry made in his diary in 1933. Later he returns to this idea and deepens it, asserting that “pure art” does not exist, that the slogan “art for art’s sake” is meaningless.

Maugham is convinced that the author offers his criticism of reality already by what events, what characters he chooses, as well as through his attitude towards them. Perhaps this criticism is not original and not very deep, but it exists, and because of this the writer is a moralist, albeit a very modest one. Maugham always believed that the artist's preaching is most effective if he does not even suspect that he is preaching.

Having repeated more than once that the art of writing “is not a sacrament, but a craft, like any other,” Maugham thought a lot about how a semblance of life is created in a narrative. Literature and life are inseparable concepts for him. The writer's subject is life in all its manifestations, but where does the novelist get that living tissue that serves as his material? A. Bennett believed that “he is cutting her off from himself.” Maugham also believed that the nature of fiction is necessarily autobiographical. Everything a writer creates “is an expression of his personality, a manifestation of his innate instincts, his feelings and experiences.” The personality of the author plays a decisive role in the selection of material. This invisible imprint lies on every page, for the great writer has his own unique vision of the world. The brighter and richer the author's individuality, the greater his chances of giving the characters the illusion of originality.

“There is only one way to achieve success, as experience tells me,” writes Maugham, “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. 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.”

Maugham's reflections on the mission of a writer in the modern world have not lost their relevance to this day. “Now everyone knows,” he writes at the very beginning of the Second World War, “that the world is in a terrible state, freedom is dead or dying, everywhere you look there is poverty, unscrupulous exploitation of man by man, cruelty, injustice. Reasons for anger and pity plenty; the trouble is that these feelings are meaningless if they do not lead to definite efforts. They are immoral if, satisfied with yourself and your generous emotions, you do not try to change the conditions that gave rise to them... The job of a writer is not to feel sorry and not to be angry , but to understand."

A writer cannot be impartial. "His goal is not to copy life, but to dramatize it." He is ready to respect the naturalist artist for depicting life with fearless directness, for the absence of sweet syrup and cheap optimism in his works, but he refuses to consider verisimilitude the main advantage of art. This idea matured gradually. In the novel "The Burden of Human Passions" the hero - the author's alter ego - finds himself in Spain and "discovers" El Greco. The paintings of this mysterious master are stunning and convince us of the existence of a very special realism: everything in them contradicts plausibility and at the same time, they convey a much greater truth of life than that achieved by masters who worked in a traditional manner.

By creating his heroes, the writer captures barely emerging trends in modern times and anticipates life. The ability to create reality, not just copy, but create your own world, is what distinguishes a craftsman from a Master.

Honesty, tolerance, common sense, independence, broad education, the deepest knowledge of human nature and the craft of writing, high artistic skill, the ability to involve the reader in a conversation, allowing him to feel like an equal with him, the Master, is what makes Maugham the critic desirable interlocutor.

And another lesson from his “practical aesthetics” is instructive: openness to others national cultures. Today, more than ever, we need an example of perceiving art and the Beautiful as a universal property.

“It makes absolutely no difference who carved the statue - an ancient Greek or a modern Frenchman. The only important thing is that it now evokes aesthetic excitement in us and that this aesthetic excitement pushes us to action.”

Maugham considered his reasoning to be nothing more than an opinion, a personal point of view. And yet today they are perceived not only as evidence of a bygone literary era to which he belonged, but also as a key to understanding modern phenomena of reality and literature.

Literature

1. Quotes are given from Maugham’s works included in this collection, so the sources of citations are not indicated further.
2. Nagibin Yu. An unwritten story by Somerset Maugham // Get up and go: Tales and stories. M., 1989. P. 654.
3. It is unknown how many plays Maugham wrote. Some of them were preserved in manuscripts; the rest, shortly before his death, the writer destroyed along with for the most part your archive.
4. Shaginyan M. Foreign letters. M., 1964. P. 213.
5. In 1954, the book was published in a revised form under the title “Ten Novels and Their Creators.”

Biography (E. A. Guseva.)

Maugham William Somerset (January 25, 1874, Paris, December 16, 1965, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France), English writer. Born into the family of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France. Received medical education; practice in a poor quarter of London provided material for M.’s first novel, “Lisa from Lambeth” (1897). Participant of the 1st World War 1914?18; agent of British intelligence, including in Russia (collection of short stories “Ashenden, or the British Agent”, 1928). The first success was brought to M. by the plays: “Lady Frederick” (post. 1907), later? "The Circle" (1921), "Sheppie" (1933). In the novels “The Moon and a Penny” (1919, Russian translation 1927, 1960), “Gingerbread and Ale” (1930) M.’s rejection of religious hypocrisy and ugly petty-bourgeois morals were expressed. Attempts to free oneself from the baseness of bourgeois standards of life are shown in the novel “The Razor's Edge” (1944). The most famous is the largely autobiographical novel of education “The Burden of Human Passions” (1915; Russian translation, 1959); subtle psychologism in the depiction of the hero’s moral quest is combined with the breadth of the depicted picture of the world. M.'s creativity developed in line with critical realism, sometimes with elements of naturalism. M.'s works are always action-packed. M.’s notebooks, prefaces to his own and others’ books, and especially the book “Summing Up” (1938, Russian translation, 1957) are full of interesting observations on the creative process and contain a number of insightful literary assessments and self-assessments.

Op.:

* The collected edition of the works, v. 1?21, L., 1934?59;
* A writer's notebook, L., 1949; Points of view, Garden City (N.Y.), 1959; in Russian translation? Dozhd, M., 1961;
* Notes on creativity, “Questions of Literature”, 1966, No. 4; Theater, in collection:
* Modern English short story, M., 1969.

Lit.:

* Kanin G., Remembering Mr., Maugham, N. Y., ;
* Brown I., W. S. Maugham, L., 1970;
* Calder R. L., W. S. Maugham and the quest for freedom, L., 1972.

Biography (en.wikipedia.org)

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 the UK:

It was expected that a law would be passed by which all children born on French territory would automatically become French citizens and thus, upon reaching adulthood, be sent to the front in case of war.

As a child, Maugham spoke only French; he mastered English only after he was orphaned at age 11 (his mother died of consumption in February 1882, his father died of stomach cancer in June 1884) and was sent to relatives in the English town of Whitstable in the county. Kent, six miles from Canterbury. Upon arrival in England, Maugham began to stutter - this remained for the rest of his life.

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 German composer Meerbeer (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. The intelligence officer’s work was reflected in the collection of short stories “Ashenden, or the British Agent” (1928, Russian translation 1992).

In May 1917, Maugham married Siri Wellcome.

After the war, Maugham continued his successful career as a playwright, writing the plays The Circle (1921) and Sheppey (1933). Maugham's novels were also successful - “The Burden of Human Passions” (1915; Russian translation, 1959) - an almost autobiographical novel, “The Moon and a Penny” (1919, Russian translation, 1927, 1960), “Pies and Beer” (1930) , "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.

Maugham died on December 15, 1965 in a hospital in Nice from pneumonia. But since, according to French law, patients who died in hospital were required to undergo an autopsy, he was taken home and only on December 16 was it reported that Somerset Maugham had died at home, at Villa Moresque, in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat near Nice .

On December 22, his ashes were buried under the wall of the Maugham Library at the King's School in Canterbury.

Bibliography

Prose

* “Liza of Lambeth” (Liza of Lambeth, 1897)
* The Making of a Saint (1898)
* Orientations (1899)
* The Hero (1901)
* 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” (On A Chinese Screen, 1922)
* “The Painted Veil” (1925)
* “Casuarina” (The Casuarina Tree, 1926)
* The Letter (Stories of Crime) (1930)
* “Ashenden, or the British Agent” (1928). Novels
* The Gentleman In The Parlour: 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 (1935)
* 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 (1940)
* Books and You (1940)
* “According to the same recipe” (The Mixture As Before, 1940)
* “Up at the Villa” (1941)
* 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)

Plays

* A Man of Honor
* “Lady Frederick” (Lady Frederick, post. 1907)
* "Jack Straw" / "Jack Straw" (Jack Straw, 1908)
* "Mrs. Dot"
* "Penelope"
* The Explorer
* The Tenth Man
* "Nobility" (Landed Gentry, 1910)
* "Smith" (Smith, 1909)
* The Land of Promise
* The Unknown
* “The Circle” (1921)
* Caesar's Wife
*East of Suez
* Our Betters
*Home and Beauty
* The Unattainable
* Loaves and Fishes (1911)
* “The Constant Wife” (1927)
*The Letter
* The Sacred Flame
*The Bread-Winner
* For Services Rendered
* "Sheppie" (1933)

Film adaptations

* 1925 - “East of Suez” / East of Suez
* 1928 - Sadie Thompson
* 1929 - The Letter
* 1932 - Rain
* 1934 - “The Burden of Human Passions” / Of Human Bondage (with Bette Davis)
* 1934 - “The Painted Veil” (with Greta Garbo)
* 1938 - The Vessel of Wrath
* 1940 - The Letter
* 1942 - “The Moon and Sixpence” / The Moon and Sixpence
* 1946 - “The Razor's Edge” / The Razor's Edge
* 1946 - “The Burden of Human Passions” / Of Human Bondage
* 1948 - Quartet
* 1950 - Trio
* 1952 - Encore
* 1953 - Miss Sadie Thompson
* 1957 - The Seventh Sin
* 1958 - The Beachcomber
* 1962 - Julia, du bist zauberhaft
* 1964 - “The Burden of Human Passions” / Of Human Bondage
* 1969 - The Letter
* 1978 - “Theater” (with Vija Artmane and Ivars Kalnins)
* 1982 - The Letter
* 1984 - “The Razor's Edge” / The Razor's Edge (with Bill Murray)
* 2000 - Up at the Villa
* 2004 - “Theatre” / Being Julia (with Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons)
* 2006 - The Painted Veil (with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts)

Interesting Facts

* During the First World War, he collaborated with MI5 and was sent to Russia as an agent of British intelligence.
* ...Because of his short stature (152 cm), Maugham was declared unfit for military service and he did not go to the fronts of the First World War. He got a job as a driver for the Red Cross. In 1915, an officer from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) drew attention to him and recruited him as a secret agent.
* Maugham's candidacy was perfectly suited for work outside Foggy Albion. Firstly, having lived for several years in France and Germany, he was fluent in German and French. Secondly, he had a real cover - literary activity.
* Maugham spent almost a year in Switzerland, where he conducted surveillance of persons suspected of spying for Germany. Maintained contacts with representatives of various allied intelligence services. He regularly sent detailed reports to SIS and worked on plays at the same time.

A new biography of Somerset Maugham has been published in the UK. Its author, the writer Selina Hastings, became the first Maugham biographer to receive permission from the Royal Literary Fund to review the writer's private correspondence, which Maugham ordered never to be published.

In 1955, when Somerset Maugham was 82, he was asked in an interview whether he wanted his biography to be published in England. Maugham rejected the idea without hesitation. “The lives of modern writers,” he said, “are not of any interest in themselves. As for my life, it is simply boring, and I do not want to be associated with boredom.”

The Secret Life of Somerset Maugham, written by Selina Hastings, refutes this assertion, proving that Maugham's life was a series of exciting adventures, secrets and love affairs. Over the course of a sixty-year literary career, Maugham traveled extensively to exotic Asian countries, visited Oceania, worked for British intelligence, and visited Russia on a spy mission at the height of the February Revolution. And at the same time he did not stop writing. He is the author of 21 novels and more than a hundred short stories, and dozens of his plays have dominated the theater stages London and New York at the beginning of the last century. He was a socialite and moved in the artistic and social elite of London, Paris and New York. Among his friends whom he received at his Villa Moresque on the French Riviera are: Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells, Jean Cocteau, Noel Coward. Maugham's life seemed to be spent in the glamor of incredible literary success, and he had a reputation as perhaps the most important writer of his time. However, Selina Hastings in her new biography Maugham lifts the curtain on his complex character, frequent depression - the result of an unhappy childhood and an unsuccessful marriage. Over the tragic and shocking end of his life when he became a victim of mental illness. "The Secret Life of Somerset Maugham" is destined to become a bestseller, since its hero still remains one of the most popular and readable writers all over the world, including in Russia. Selina Hastings became the first Maugham biographer to gain access to his private correspondence, which he forbade publication. Did you manage to learn anything new about Maugham from it? RS answered the observer’s questions herself Selina Hastings:

I received a lot of new information. For example, I read the letters he wrote in his youth, when he was studying medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. The letters were addressed to his very close friend the artist Gerald Kelly. They contained, in particular, a detailed description of his affair with a charming young actress. There were letters that described how Maugham was forced to marry a woman he did not love. All this, as well as his reading circle, opinions about the friends he met, were contained in letters addressed to Kelly.

- Christopher Isherwood compared Somerset Maugham to an old suitcase covered with numerous hotel stickers, and noted that no one knows what is actually inside the suitcase. What is there, in your opinion?

- What Maugham tried to hide: very passionate, very vulnerable, very emotional person. He showed himself to the world as completely different: a cynic for whom nothing was sacred. And this is more than far from the truth. He was a moral, brave man and a true realist. Nothing in human nature could surprise him. He was constantly criticized for his supposed cynicism, but the reason for this was his works. He did not ignore the baser sides of human nature and demonstrated them mainly in his plays. At the time, people were shocked by this and preferred to call it cynicism rather than realism.

- In his autobiographical notes “Summing Up,” Maugham did not highly appreciate his writing talent. What do you think is his place in English literature?

Maugham was read not only by literature lovers, but also by people who usually did not read anything, who had never visited either bookstores or libraries

- Which of Maugham’s novels do you think most powerfully reflected his personality?

Undoubtedly, this is “The Burden of Human Passions” - his most significant autobiographical novel. Maugham is the main character in this book. In it he portrayed himself practically without any embellishment.

- One of the reviews of your book says that Maugham was not so much a creator as an observer. Do you agree with this?

- Agree. I think Maugham had very little creative imagination - he said so himself. For his work, he needed life material, real life stories, which he used in books and stories. He spent a significant part of his life traveling around the world, as he was constantly in need of fresh material.

- How would you characterize his political beliefs?

- He was a moderate socialist - unlike his brother, the Lord Chancellor, who belonged to the far right wing of the Conservative Party. This is partly because as a young man he spent five years in a hospital in Lambeth, one of London's poorest slums, where he worked as a doctor. Maugham's convictions have always been center-left, and he never betrayed them.

- But Maugham carried out espionage missions for the Conservative government, in particular in Russia. Was he a spy in in every sense words?

Maugham admired Russian literature, studied Russian, spoke Russian, and loved visiting Russia. For all these three reasons, intelligence service opened up very interesting prospects for him.

-You write that sex was one of Maugham's hobbies. What role did sex play in his life?

- In a physiological sense, he was hypersexual, as, indeed, many creative personalities. In addition, sex for him was one of the ways to get closer to people. But the problem was that he was considered a cold, unattractive person, which was not true, but this was his behavior. With the help of sex, he instantly overcame this popular belief. Maugham was bisexual. However, as he grew older, his homosexuality became more prevalent. He had many affairs with women, he loved them. And if he had married his beloved actress Sue Jones, with whom he had a long affair, this marriage could have been happy for him, because she was very lenient about his homosexual relationships.

Maugham was in love with Gerald Haxton, with whom he had a very long relationship. Haxton was American and twenty years his junior. A charming young man, but very dissolute - a drunkard, a passionate gambler with an uncontrollable and dangerous character. One side of Maugham's personality liked it. The other side of him was very picky and moralistic. But Maugham was always attracted to swindlers, rogues, scoundrels and all sorts of petty crooks - he found them attractive.

- Can Maugham be called an English gentleman?

“He would really like to be called that, and he considered himself one.” However, I think that Maugham was too ambiguous for this; he had to suppress too much in himself. At heart he was a rebel, although outwardly he seemed like an English gentleman - an impeccable three-piece suit, monocle and so on, but his nature was too rebellious.

- Why did Maugham ultimately choose to live in France?

- He married in 1917 and could not get a divorce until 1928. As soon as he got divorced, he immediately left England, in which it was difficult for him to live for many reasons. Of all the countries in Europe, Britain had the toughest laws against homosexuality. He bought a beautiful villa on Cape Ferrat on the French Riviera and turned it into a luxurious home. This completely suited Maugham's tastes and nature. There he enjoyed the company of his famous guests, lived there in fashionable surroundings - with thirteen servants, haute cuisine, swimming pool, cocktails and all the rest. Nevertheless, he was a highly disciplined man and every day at nine in the morning he went up to his tiny office under the roof, where he sat down at his desk and did not leave there until lunch at one in the afternoon. He even covered the window in his office so that the beautiful view of the Mediterranean Sea would not distract him. He followed this routine every day for forty years.

-Has your opinion of Maugham changed after working on his biography?

- In many ways. Before writing the book, I imagined him as a sort of crocodile from Cape Ferrat. Now I find it extremely interesting and deserving of sympathy. This is a difficult man, but an interesting one, and now I have sympathy for him.

- How popular is Maugham now in England and other countries?

Very popular. His books are constantly published, his plays are often staged in Britain, and at times in America. It is incredibly popular in France and Germany. Most recently, his novel The Patterned Veil was made into a film in Hollywood starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. Previously, another of his novels was filmed - in the original it was called “Theater”, and in the film it was called “Being Julia”. Adaptations of his plays appear on television, and book circulations increase. They continue to read it.

- John Keats said that the life of a writer is an allegory that has additional meaning for other people. What can be said about Maugham's life in this sense?

- In my opinion, the most important topic, running through his life and books, is the essential importance of freedom for man and artist. He wrote with unflagging force about people trapped in marriage or similar situations. He never tired of proving how destructive this is to the human spirit. This is also true in his own life. He was trapped in his terrible marriage and trapped by his country's laws against homosexuality at the time. We must give him his due: he always fought for his freedom. I think that this is exactly what can be called an allegory of his life.

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, it’s 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. He also graduated from primary school 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. It was in his parsonage that Maugham spent his school years, growing up lonely and withdrawn, feeling like an outsider at school, and very different from the boys growing up in England, who laughed at Maugham’s stuttering and his way of speaking 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.”

Medical practice, which began in his third year, 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 know of no better school for a writer than the work of 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 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 to create Lisa of Lambeth. This novel was published in September 1897.

“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 born not under the influence of literary images, but the real impressions of the author. Maugham tried to reproduce with maximum accuracy the life and customs of Lambeth, into whose sinister 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 a loud scandal caused 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, the tragic story of the girl, 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 sharply 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 the “great game,” but later, when 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 I 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 to discover Chekhov. He later said: “When the English intelligentsia became interested in Russia, I remembered that Cato began to study Greek at the age of eighty, 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 new inexhaustible 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. The tragedy of the “lost generation” was revealed by him in the play “The Unknown”. Also, the atmosphere of the “roaring thirties”, the 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. The 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, only two women played an important role in Maugham's life. 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 Herbert Wells visited the writer, and Soviet writers occasionally visited. 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 reached England on a coal barge, and later left for the United States, where he lived until the end of the war. For most of World War II, Maugham was in Hollywood, where he worked on scripts and made changes 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.

The post-war decade was also fruitful for the writer. Maugham first turned to the genre of 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 last novels were written in a new manner for 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 Story” 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 )

Used materials:

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"