W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham as photographed in 1934 by Carl Van Vechten.

William Somerset Maugham (January 25 1874 Paris, France – December 16 1965 Nice, France) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer, reputedly the highest paid author of the 1930s.

Childhood and education

Maugham was born to English parents living in France. His father Robert Ormond Maugham was an English lawyer who had his office directly across the street from the British embassy in Paris and had been appointed to handle the embassy's legal affairs ^[1]. At the time France was concerned about manpower and this led to a proposed law that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service. His father's connection allowed for an arrangement for William to be born at the embassy, making it technically true that he was born in Britain and safe from conscription for any future French wars ^[2]. His grandfather another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and cofounder of the English Law Society ^[3] so it was preferred that Maugham would follow in their footsteps although later events was to ensure this was not to be. However his older brother Frederic Herbert Maugham did go on to become a lawyer and then England's Lord Chancellor between 1938-1939.

Maugham's mother Edith Mary (nee Snell) was consumptive and doctors at that time prescribed child birth as a treatment for such a condition. Therefore prior to Maugham's birth his mother had also born four other sons, three of whom survived but as he was the youngest by at least six years, they left to go to boarding school by the time he was three. Maugham's life was warmed by an exclusive maternal love, although his mother did give birth to a still born child when he was about five, and then when he was eight, to another boy who died the day after birth. Unfortunately there was no cure for his mother's consumption and Edith Mary Maugham at the age of forty-one, died 6 days after the birth of her final son. The loss of his mother [1] left him traumatised for the rest of his life and and he kept always by his bedside the photograph his mother had specially arranged for him when she knew she was soon to die ^[4].

Two years after the death of his mother, Maugham's father died of cancer [1]. Maugham the orphan was sent to Kent England to be cared for by relatives. Having lived in France for the first 10 years of his life Maugham struggled with not having a background in English. He was then boarded at the The King's School, Canterbury. It is at about this time that he developed a stammer that was to stay with him all his life although it was not completely inhibiting as it was somewhat sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance ^[5]. Maugham had also inherited his father's short stature. These two physical attributes contributed to his difficulty in making friends, resulting in him developing a shy and introverted manner [1].

Maugham spent his holidays with his uncle Henry MacDonald Maugham, who was the Vicar of Whitstable, England, a man he found cold and emotionally cruel. It seems that Maugham was miserable, both at the vicarage and at his boarding school, where he was bullied because of his size and his stammer but this resulted in his developing the talent for applying a wounding remark to those that displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in the characters he portrayed in his writings.

At sixteen Maugham refused to continue his attendance at The King's School and was permitted by his uncle to travel to Germany, where he enthusiastically studied literature, philosophy and the German Language at Heidelberg University. Whilst in Heidelberg he met John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. It was with Brooks that Maugham had his first homosexual experience ^[6].

On his return to England his uncle found Maugham a position in an accountant's office but after a month disgusted with the job Maugham, returned to Whitstable. His uncle was not pleased, and whilst wondering what to do with him, was prompted by the local doctor who suggested the profession of medicine. Maugham did not want to study medicine. He wanted to be a writer and had been writing steadily since the age of 15 but he could not tell his guardian of his plans as he was not of age and he could see the benefit of studying medicine in terms of learning of life and so he spent 5 years in London, qualifying from St. Thomas' Teaching Hospital in 1897 ^[7].

Career

Whilst in Heidelberg Maugham at only 16 had put together his first written work, a biography on the German composer, Meyerbeer which when turned down by a publisher Maugham promptly disposed of by throwing it into his fireplace. Undeterred, Maugham continuing writing nightly, practising his trade whilst at the same time studying for his degree in medicine. In 1897 he presented his second book for consideration. The novel Liza of Lambeth drew on his experiences as a medical student whilst undertaking as part of his training, mid-wifery work in the slums of the East End.

Liza was daringly avant garde for the time, and displayed many of the characteristics that were to mark Maugham's later fiction and stage plays: realism, taboo-breaking, and a certain callousness, which might also be called detachment, although the usual critical phrase used to describe his work in his own lifetime was "cynical". The book enjoyed modest sales and drew the attention of critics, which was enough to convince Maugham to drop medicine and embark on the career of a writer. It was not until 1907, however, that he achieved success, with his play Lady Frederick; by the next year he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch magazine published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.

Although famous by then, with 10 plays having been produced, and 10 published novels, during World War I Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross ambulance driving group. Maugham was part of the group of at least 23 well-known writers including Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and E.E. Cummings who served in this capacity during the war and were later referred to as the Literary Ambulance Drivers. During this time he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan who would become his constant companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944.

Throughout this period Maugham continued to write. His lengthy (650 pages) novel titled Of Human Bondage, described at the time by critics as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century appeared in 1915. The book appeared to be closely autobiographical, (Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitestable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Phillip Carey becomes a doctor) although Maugham himself indicated it was more invention than otherwise. However the close relationship of fictional and non-fictional characteristation in his written work became Maugham's trademark despite the requirement placed upon him to indicate that the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary.

Later in the war he served as a spy for the Secret Intelligence Service (later named MI6) in Russia with the mission of preventing the Russian Revolution by keeping the Mensheviks in power; Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to arrive a little earlier, he could have prevented the triumph of Lenin. From this experience came a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, and aloof spy, Ashenden, (1928) - the name of the hero, but also of one of Maugham's fellow-pupils at the King's School - a volume which Ian Fleming cited as an influence on his character of James Bond.

Maugham was clearly not exclusively homosexual in his relationships, having an affair with the then-married Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo, a daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome. In 1915 Syrie had a daughter to Maugham who was later officially named Elizabeth 'Liza' Mary Maugham (1915-1998) and Syrie was then sued for divorce by her husband Henry Wellcome. In May of 1916, following her divorce Maugham and Syrie were married. Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s. In 1922 he dedicated his short story collection On a Chinese Screen to her. They divorced during 1927 and 1928 after a tempestuous marriage that may have been complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and his relationship with Haxton, (who appears as Tony Paxton in Maugham's 1917 play, Our Betters).

Maugham had begun travelling widely from 1917, partly as a result of his Russian adventure. He travelled to the more exotic corners of the colonial world. One of the first of these travels was a trip to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of Paul Gauguin. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensible to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton's extroverted personality allowed him to gather the human material that was steadily turned into fiction. In 1928 he bought Villa Mauresque on twelve acres at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, which would be his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, producing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France decreed that Maugham should leave the Mauresque and take up the life of a refugee, he was already one of the most famous writers in the English-speaking world, and one of the wealthiest.

Maugham spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations of his books) and later in the South. While in the US, he was encouraged by the British government to make patriotic speeches to impel the US to help Britain, if not get involved in the war effort. Gerald Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham moved back to England, and then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived - except for his frequent and long travels - until his death. The gap left by Haxton's death was filled by Alan Searle, a young man from London's East End who, as a boy, had been well known in the homosexual circles of London high society frequented by Maugham (he had once been Noel Coward's boyfriend). Searle proved a devoted but perhaps not a stimulating companion - one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Searle and Haxton, said simply: "Gerald was champagne." His last years were marred by several quasi-scandals which can probably be set down to a progressive loss of judgement as he grew older: the worst of these was the publication of Looking Back (1962), which contained a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie which cost him many friends. In his last years Maugham adopted Searle as his son in order to ensure that he would inherit his estate, a move hotly contested by his daughter Liza and her husband, and which exposed Maugham to much public ridicule.

Achievements

Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Yet despite his triumphs, he never attracted the respect of the critics or of his peers, and his own opinion of his abilities remained low, to the extent of describing himself towards the end of his career as "in the very first row of the second-raters". He was made a Companion of Honour in 1954.

Maugham had also begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and then continued to build up his collection to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club ^[8]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre and from 1951, some 14 years before his death they began their exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Convent Garden [2] [3].

File:Maugham.JPG

W. Somerset Maugham as photographed by George Platt Lynes.

Significant works

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Maugham's severe stutter has been replaced by Philip's clubfoot.

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East, and are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Some of his more outstanding works in this genre include Rain, Footprints in the Jungle, and The Outstation. Rain, in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its fame and been made into a movie several times. Maugham said that many of his short stories presented themselves to him, in the stories he heard, during his travels in the outposts of the Empire. He left behind a long string of angry former hosts. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without descending into melodrama. His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley.

Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of his generation, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Rose Macaulay and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include The Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On a Chinese Sceen, a series of very brief vignettes which might almost be notes for short stories that were never written.

Influence

In 1947 he instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, still given to this day to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable past winners include Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn. On his death, he donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.

His commercial success and his careful highly polished prose style virtually assured that he would be an object of scorn to many of his fellow authors. One of very few later writers to cite his influence was Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers. George Orwell also stated that his writing style was influenced by Maugham. The American writer Paul Theroux, in his short story collection The Consul's File, updated Maugham's colonial world in an outstation of expatriates in modern Malaysia.

Bibliography

Novels, Books & Pamphlets ^[9]

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)
Of Human Bondage (1915)
The Moon and Sixpence (1919)
The Trembling of a Leaf (1921)
On A Chinese Screen (1922)
The Painted Veil (1925)
The Casuarina Tree (1926)
The Letter (Stories of Crime) (1930)
Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928)
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 Judgement Seat (1934)
Don Fernando (1935)
Cosmopolitans - Very Short Stories (1936)
My South Sea Island (1936)
Theatre (1937)
The Summing Up (1938)
Christmas Holiday (1939)
Princess September and The Nightingale (1939)
France At War (1940)
Books and You (1940)
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 (1946)
Of Human Bondage - An Address (1946)
Creatures of Circumstance (1947)
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)
Points of View (1958)
Purely For My Pleasure (1962)

Maugham also edited and finished the autobiography of the Victorian actor Sir Charles Hawtrey (1858-1923), called The Truth at Last, which was posthumously published in 1924.

Plays ^[10]

A Man of Honour (1903)
Lady Frederick (1912) NB Written but not published in 1903, first produced as a play in 1907
Jack Straw (1912) NB Written but not published in 1907, first produced as a play in 1908
Mrs Dot (1912) NB Written but not published in 1904, first produced as a play in 1908
Penelope (1912) NB Written but not published in 1908, first produced as a play in 1909
The Explorer (1912) NB Written but not published in 1899, first produced as a play in 1908
The Tenth Man (1913) NB Written but not published in 1909, first produced as a play in 1910
Landed Gentry (1913) NB Written but not published in 1910, first produced as a play in 1910
Smith (1913) NB Written but not published in 1909, first produced as a play in 1909
The Land Of Promise (1913)
The Unknown (1920)
The Circle (1921) NB Written but not published in 1919, first produced as a play in 1921
Caesar's Wife (1922) NB Written but not published in 1918, first produced as a play in 1919
East Of Suez (1922)
Our Betters (1923) NB Written but not published in 1915, first produced as a play in 1917
Home And Beauty (1923) NB Written but not published in 1915, first produced as a play in 1919
The Unattainable (1923) NB Written but not published in 1902, novelised as The Bishop's Apron in 1906, first produced as a play in 1911
Loaves And Fishes (1924) NB Written but not published in 1919, first produced as a play in 1916
The Constant Wife (1927) NB Written but not published in 1926, first produced as a play in 1926
The Letter (1927)
The Sacred Flame (1928)
The Bread-Winner (1930)
For Services Rendered (1932)
Sheppey (1933) NB Written but not published in 1932, first produced as a play in 1933

Contributions to periodicals ^[11]

1. Don Sebastian 1898
2. Cupid and the Vicar of Swale 1900
3. Lady Habart 1900
4. Schiffbruchig 1903
5. Pro Patria 1903
6. A Man of Honour 1903
7. A Point of Law 1904
8. An Irish Gentleman 1904
9. A Rehearsal 1905
10. Flirtation 1906
11. The Fortunate Painter and the Honest Jew 1906
12. A Marriage of Convenience 1908
13. The Making of a Millionaire 1906
14. Good Manners 1907
15. Cousin Amy (later rewritten as The Luncheon) 1908
16. The Happy Couple 1908
17. A Traveller in Romance 1909
18. The Mother (originally titled La Cachirra) 1909
19. Pygmalion at Home and Abroad 1914
20. Gerald Festus Kelly 1915
21. Mackintosh 1920
22. Miss Thompson (later retitled as Rain) 1921
23. Red 1921
24. On Writing for the Films 1921
25. The Pool 1921
26. Honolulu 1921
27. My South Sea Island 1922
28. Foreign Devils (later retitled as Dinner Parties) 1922
29. Fear 1922
30. A City Built on a Rock 1922
31. Philosopher 1922
32. Two Studies – Mr Pete (later retitled to The Consul) & The Vice-Consul 1922
33. Taipan 1922
34. The Princess and the Nightingale 1922
35. Before the Party 1922
36. Bewitched (later retitled to P & O) 1923
37. The Imposters (later retitled Raw Material) 1923
38. Mayhew 1924
39. German Harry 1924
40. The Force of Circumstance 1924
41. In a Strange Land 1924
42. The Luncheon 1924
43. The Round Dozen (later retitled to The Ardent Bigamist) 1924
44. The Woman Who Wouldn’t Take a Hint 1924
45. The Letter 1924
46. A Dream (later retitled to The Dream) 1924
47. The Outstation 1924
48. The Happy Man 1924
49. Salvatore the Fisherman (later retitled as Salvatore) 1924
50. Home from the Sea (later retitled as Home) 1925
51. The Ant and the Grasshopper 1924
52. Mr Know-All 1925
53. Novelist or Bond Salesman 1925
54. The Widow’s Might (later retitled as The Escape) 1925
55. The Man Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly (later retitled as A Friend in Need) 1925
56. The Code of a Gentleman (later retitled as Portrait of a Gentleman) 1925
57. The Yellow Streak 1925
58. The Most Selfish Woman I Knew (later retitled as Louise) 1925
59. The Man with a Scar 1925
60. The Great Man (later retitled as The Poet) 1926
61. An Honest Woman (later retitled as The Promise) 1926
62. The End of the Flight 1926
63. Another Man without a Country (later retitled as French Joe) 1926
64. Consul (was in fact a book in 1922 before it was a periodical article) 1926
65. The Creative Impulse 1926
66. The Closed Shop 1927
67. Footprints in the Jungle 1927
68. Pearls (later retitled as A String of Beads) 1927
69. Advice to a Young Author 1927
70. The Traitor 1927
71. One of Those Women (later retitled as The Dark Woman) 1927
72. His Excellency 1928
73. The Hairless Mexican 1928
74. Mr Harrington’s Washing 1928
75. The British Agent (later retitled as Miss King) 1928
76. The Four Dutchmen 1928
77. In Hiding (later retitled as The Wash Tub) 1929
78. A Derelict (later retitled as The Bum) 1929
79. The Extraordinary Sex (later retitled The Social Sense) 1929
80. Straight Flush 1929
81. The Man Who Made His Mark (later retitled as The Verger) 1929
82. Through the Jungle 1929
83. Mirage 1929
84. A Marriage of Convenience 1929
85. On the Road to Mandalay (initially titled and then later retitled back to Masterson) 1929
86. Cakes and Ale 1930
87. Maltreat the Dead in Fiction 1930
88. The Human Element 1930
89. Virtue 1931
90. The Vessel of Wrath 1931
91. Maugham Discusses Drama 1931
92. Arnold Bennett 1931
93. The Right Thing is the Kind Thing (later retitled as The Back of Beyond) 1931
94. The Alien Corn 1931
95. The Door of Opportunity 1931
96. The Temptation of Neil MacAdam (later retitled as Neil MacAdam) 1932
97. The Narrow Corner 1932
98. For Services Rendered 1932
99. The Three Fat Women of Antibes 1933
100. The Buried Talent 1934
101. The Best Ever (later retitled as The Treasure) 1934
102. How I Write Short Stories 1934
103. The Short Story 1934
104. A Casual Affair 1934
105. Appearance and Reality 1934
106. The Voice of the Turtle 1935
107. Gigolo and Gigolette 1935
108. The Lotus Eater 1935
109. An Official Position 1937
110. The Lion’s Skin 1937
111. The Sanatorium 1938
112. The Professional Writer 1939
113. Doctor and Patient (later retitled as Lord Mountdrago) 1939
114. You and Some More Books 1939
115. The Facts of Life 1939
116. A Man with a Conscience 1939
117. Christmas Holiday 1939
118. Proof Reading as an Avocation 1939
119. Classic Books of America 1940
120. The Villa on the Hill (later retitled as Up at the Villa) 1940
121. Britain Views the French Navy 1940
122. The Refugee Ship 1940
123. The Insider Story of the Collapse of France 1940
124 The Lion at Bay 1940
125 Reading under Bombing 1940
126 Give me a Murder 1940
127 What Tomorrow Holds 1941
128 The are Strange People 1941
129 Novelist’s Flight from France 1941
130 Little Things of no Consequence 1941
131 We Have Been Betrayed 1941
132 Escape to America 1941
133 Theatre 1941
134 Mr Tomkin’s Sitter 1941
135 The Culture that is to Come 1941
136 An Exciting Prospect 1941
137 Paintings I Have Liked 1941
138 The Hour Before Dawn 1941
139 Why Do You Dislike Us? 1942
140 To Know About England and the English 1942
141 Morale Made in America 1942
142 The Happy Couple 1943
143 Virtue (different article to that at 90 above) 1943
144 Unconquered 1943
145 The Captain and Miss Reid (later retitled as Winter Cruise) 1943
146 Reading and Writing and You 1943
147 We Have a Common Heritage 1943
148 The Terrorist 1943
149 Write about What You Know 1943
150 The Razor’s Edge 1943
151 How I Like to Play Bridge 1944
152 In Defence of Who-Done-Its 1945
153 What Reading Can Do For You 1945
154 The Colonel’s Lady 1946
155 A Woman of Fifty 1946
156 Function of the Writer 1946
157 Then and Now 1946
158 Behind the Story 1946
159 Episode 1947
160 The Point of Honour 1947
161 What Should a Novel Do? 1947
162 The Romantic Young Lady 1947
163 Gustave Flaubert and Madame Bovary 1947
164 Henry Fielding and Tom Jones 1947
165 Honoré De Balzac and Old Man Goriot 1948
166 Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights 1948
167 Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Brothers Karamazov 1948
168 Stendhal and the Red and the Black 1948
169 Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice 1948
170 Herman Melville and Moby Dick 1948
171 Charles Dickens and David Copperfield 1948
172 Catalina 1948
173 Spanish Journey 1948
174 Ten Best Sellers 1948
175 A Writer’s Notebook 1949
176 Augustus 1949/1950
177 Zurbaran 1950
178 After Reading Burke 1950/1951
179 Somerset Maugham Tells a Story of the Lady from Poonay 1951
180 The Bidding Started Slowly 1952
181 Looking Back on Eighty Years 1954
182 Somerset Maugham and the Greatest Novels (later retitled Ten Novels and their Authors) 1954
183 The Perfect Gentleman 1955
184 On Having My Portrait Painted 1959
185 Credo of a Story Teller 1959
186 On the Approach of Middle Age 1960
187 Looking Back 1962

This list represents in chronological order the first printing date of every article or contribution made by Maugham to journals and periodicals during his lifetime. Maugham often tested his audience and his own interest in a story by serialising it through newspaper or magazine periodicals, then later released the story as a novel, or part of a collected short stories book.

Short stories

1. A Bad Example
2. A Casual Affair
3. A Chance Acquaintance
4. A Domiciliary Visit
5. A Friend in Need
6. A Man from Glasgow
7. A Man with a Conscience
8. A Marriage of Convenience
9. A Point of Law
10. A String of Beads
11. A Traveller in Romance
12. A Trip to Paris
13. A Woman of Fifty
14. An Irish Gentleman
15. An Official Position
16. Appearance and Reality
17. Before the Party
18. Behind the Scenes
19. Cousin Amy
20. Cupid and The Vicar of Swale
21. Daisy
22. De Amicitia
23. Episode
24. Faith
25. Flirtation
26. Flotsam and Jetsam
27. Footprints in the Jungle
28. French Joe
29. German Harry
30. Gigolo and Gigolette
31. Giulia Lazzari
32. Good Manners
33. Gustav
34. His Excellency
35. Home
36. Honolulu
37. In a Strange Land
38. Jane
39. Lady Habart
40. Lord Mountdrago
41. Louise
42. Love and Russian Literature
43. Mabel
44. Mackintosh
45. Masterson
46. Mayhew
47. Mirage
48. Miss King
49. Mr Harrington’s Washing
50. Mr Know-All
51. Neil MacAdam
52. P & O
53. Princess September
54. Pro Patria
55. R.
56. Rain
57. Raw Material
58. Red
59. Salvatore
60. Sanatorium
61. Straight Flush
62. The Alien Corn
63. The Ant and the Grasshopper
64. The Back of Beyond
65. The Book Bag
66. The Bum
67. The Buried Talent
68. The Choice of Amyntas
69. The Closed Shop
70. The Colonel’s Lady
71. The Consul
72. The Creative Impulse
73. The Dark Woman
74. The Door of Opportunity
75. The Dream
76. The End of the Flight
77. The Escape
78. The Facts of Life
79. The Fall of Edward Barnard
80. The Flip of a Coin
81. The Force of Circumstance
82. The Fortunate Painter
83. The Four Dutchmen
84. The French Governor
85. The Greek
86. The Hairless Mexican
87. The Happy Couple
88. The Happy Man
89. The Human Element
90. The Judgement Seat
91. The Kite
92. The Letter
93. The Lion’s Skin
94. The Lotus Eater
95. The Luncheon
96. The Making of a Millionaire
97. The Man with the Scar
98. The Mother
99. The Noblest Act
100. The Opium Addict
101. The Outstation
102. The Poet
103. The Point of Honour
104. The Pool
105. The Portrait of a Gentleman
106. The Promise
107. The Punctiliousness of Don Sebastian
108. The Romantic Young Lady
109. The Round Dozen
110. The Social Sense
111. The Spanish Priest
112. The Taipan
113. The Three Fat Women of Antibes
114. The Traitor
115. The Treasure
116. The Unconquered
117. The Verger
118. The Vessel of Wrath
119. The Voice of the Turtle
120. The Wash-Tub
121. The Yellow Streak
122. Virtue
123. Winter Cruise

Movie adaptations

Sadie Thompson (1928), a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson based on the short story Miss Thompson which was later retitled as Rain.
Of Human Bondage (1934) starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis based on the book of the same name.
The Vessel of Wrath (1938) starring Charles Laughton; released in the USA as The Beachcomber. Based on the novella of the same name.
The Razor's Edge (1946) starring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney based on the book of the same name.
Of Human Bondage (1946) version starring Eleanor Parker.
Quartet (1948) Maugham appears as himself in introduction. Based on the book by the same name.
Encore (1952) Maugham appears as himself in introduction. Based on the book of the same name.
The Beachcomber (1958), based on the novella The Vessel of Wrath; not to be confused with the 1938 film.
Of Human Bondage (1964) version starring Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak.
The Letter (1969) starring Eileen Atkins based on book of the same name.
The Razor's Edge (1984) starring Bill Murray based on the novel by the same name.
Up at the Villa (2000) starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, directed by Philip Haas based on the novella of the same name.
Being Julia (2004) starring Annette Bening based on the novel Theatre.

Notes

^ Maugham, Robin 1977
^ Morgan, 1980, p4
^ Maugham, Robin 1977
^ Morgan, 1980, pp8-9
^ Morgan, 1980, p17
^ Morgan, 1980, p24
^ Maugham, Somerset 1962
^ Mander & Mitchenson, 1980
^ Stott, 1973, pp16-162.
^ Stott, 1973, pp16-162.
^ Stott, 1973, pp198-215.

Sources

Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson,Joe., 1955 The Artist and the Theatre. William Heinemann Ltd
Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson,Joe., 1980 Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings. Heinemann & the National Theatre
Maugham, Robin., 1977, Somerset and all the Maughams. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837182360
Maugham, W. Somerset., 1962, Looking Back. As serialised in Show, June, July & August.
Morgan, Ted., 1980, Somerset Maugham Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224018132
Morgan, Ted., 1984, Maugham Touchstone Books. ISBN 0671505815.
Stott, Raymond Toole., 1973, A bibliography of the works of W. Somerset Maugham The University of Alberta Press. ISBN 0888640048

External links