Title: William Somerset Maugham Collection (VMF112), 1954-1964
Administrative/Biographical History
William Somerset Maugham (January 25, 1874 –December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. Maugham was born at the British embassy in Paris, France and attended The King's School, Canterbury. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School and he traveled to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer.
On his return to England, Maugham studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth, London. In 1897, he wrote his second book, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. Liza of Lambeth's first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, dropped medicine and embarked a writing career.
By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when World War I broke out; Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers." Maugham also worked for British Intelligence in mainland Europe during the war, having been recruited by John Wallinger; he was one of the network of British agents who operated in Switzerland against the Berlin Committee, notably Virendranath Chattopadhyay. Maugham was later recruited by William Wiseman to work in Russia.
In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin. This was the first of those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output.
