W. Somerset Maugham: the writer who watched closely

W. Somerset Maugham made a career of turning close observation into clear, controlled stories. He began as a novelist, became a celebrated West End playwright and went on to write the novels and short fiction for which he is now best known. His subjects ranged from working-class life in London to British expatriates in Asia and the Pacific. The reach of his work was broad, but so was the debate about it: readers bought his books in huge numbers, while critics questioned their literary ambition.

Paris, Whitstable and a medical education

William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris on 25 January 1874, the fourth surviving son in a family of six children. His father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a solicitor; his mother, Edith Mary, died of tuberculosis in 1882, shortly after his eighth birthday. His father died two and a half years later. Maugham was sent to England to live with his paternal uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, a vicar in Whitstable, Kent. The move took him from the family home in Paris to a life he found socially constraining. French had been his first language, and at school in Canterbury he was teased for his poor English, short stature and stammer.

After school, Maugham spent a year and a half at Heidelberg University, studying literature, philosophy and German. He returned to Britain in 1892 and, at his uncle’s suggestion, began medical training at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in London. His student work brought him into contact with poor patients in south London and gave him direct experience of illness, pain and death. He qualified as a physician in 1897, but did not practise. That year, his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, drew on his experience of working-class life and obstetric practice. It attracted attention, and Maugham chose writing over medicine.

A playwright’s success, a novelist’s breakthrough

Maugham first became a national celebrity through the theatre. His comedy Lady Frederick, written several years earlier, opened in the West End in 1907 and ran for 422 performances. By the following year, four of his plays were running in London at the same time. He continued to write for the stage alongside novels and short stories; in all, 32 of his plays were staged between 1902 and 1933.

Of Human Bondage, published in 1915, was a turning point in his fiction. Its protagonist, Philip Carey, is an orphan with a club foot who struggles with emotional dependence and the desire for fulfilment. The novel is substantially autobiographical: Philip’s childhood losses and upbringing with older relatives echo Maugham’s, while the character’s disability has been associated with Maugham’s stammer. The book’s reception was initially mixed. The American novelist and critic Theodore Dreiser praised it, helping to shift opinion; it became one of Maugham’s best-known novels and is now often regarded as his major work.

His other prominent novels included The Moon and Sixpence (1919), about a man who abandons family life to pursue painting, The Painted Veil (1925) and Cakes and Ale (1930), a satire on literary society. The Razor’s Edge, published in 1944, follows Larry Darrell, an American veteran of the First World War who searches for spiritual understanding. The novel contrasts Western materialism with a search for meaning informed by Eastern spiritual traditions.

Travel, service and the material for stories

During the First World War, Maugham volunteered as an ambulance driver in France. He later worked for British intelligence, first in Switzerland and then on a mission to the South Seas and, in 1917, in Russia. His experiences informed the stories in Ashenden (1928), whose central character is a writer recruited into the Secret Service. The collection helped establish a model for later spy fiction, though its appearance was delayed until after the war.

Travel remained important to his work. Maugham and his companion Gerald Haxton made extended journeys through Asia, the South Seas and elsewhere. He watched people and places closely, gathering material for stories about expatriate communities and the pressures of isolation. Some of his best-known short fiction is set in Asia and the Pacific: “Rain” concerns a missionary and a woman he seeks to reform; “The Letter” turns on murder and its consequences; and “Flotsam and Jetsam” explores a shared secret on a Borneo rubber plantation. His work also ranged beyond these settings, including stories about English life and comic tales of social reinvention.

Maugham’s short stories appeared in magazines before being collected in volumes, beginning with Orientations in 1898 and continuing through Creatures of Circumstance in 1947. Critics and readers have often considered the short fiction among his strongest work. His plots are direct, his dialogue designed to sound natural, and his prose deliberately plain. That lucidity was widely recognised, though some critics objected to his frequent use of familiar phrases and felt that clarity came at the expense of stylistic distinction.

Popularity, adaptation and critical reputation

Maugham stopped writing for the theatre after Sheppey in 1933 and concentrated on novels and short stories. His work reached audiences well beyond the page. Stories and novels were adapted for film, radio and television, and he introduced screen anthologies based on his fiction. Adaptations did not always preserve his approach: some softened the moral ambiguity and unsentimental treatment of human behaviour that characterised the originals.

Commercial success did not settle questions about his standing. Maugham’s books sold prodigiously, and he was a major public figure, but some critics judged his work competent rather than innovative or profound. Others valued his craftsmanship, lucid storytelling and command of dramatic structure. His influence can be traced in later writers of fiction and spy stories, although his reputation has fluctuated. Of Human Bondage and his short fiction in particular continue to attract readers and critical attention.

Honours and final years

After the Second World War, Maugham established the Somerset Maugham Award, given annually to a British writer under 35 for fiction, non-fiction or poetry. In 1954 he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. In 1960, he became one of the first five writers to be made a Companion of Literature. His ties to Britain remained visible in his repeated visits to London and in his relationship with The King’s School, Canterbury, which he supported and where his ashes were later interred.

Maugham died in Nice on 16 December 1965, aged 91. His writing life had lasted from the publication of Liza of Lambeth in 1897 to his final works in the 1960s. He left behind an unusually varied body of work: novels, plays, short stories, travel writing and memoirs, much of it shaped by sustained attention to the people he encountered.

Why W. Somerset Maugham deserves a place in British Legacy

Maugham’s place in British literary history rests not on a single genre or book, but on the range and reach of his work. He became a leading West End playwright before establishing a lasting reputation as a novelist and short-story writer. Of Human Bondage transformed personal and emotional struggles into a widely read novel; Ashenden drew on his wartime intelligence experience to help shape the spy story; and his short fiction brought sharply observed lives from London, Asia and the Pacific to an international readership. His career also shows how literary standing can be contested: enormous popularity did not prevent critics from challenging his style, while later readers and writers continued to value his narrative skill.

His British connection is concrete. Maugham was an English writer educated and trained in Britain, whose early medical work informed his first novel and whose plays repeatedly filled London theatres. He established an award for younger British writers, received major British honours and supported his former school at Canterbury, where his ashes were placed. Those acts sit alongside, rather than replace, the achievement of the writing itself. Maugham made stories that travelled across languages and media while remaining rooted in close observation, economical narration and an unsentimental view of human conduct. Remembering him in British Legacy means recognising both his popular reach and the continuing argument over the qualities that made his work endure.

Sources

W. Somerset Maugham — Wikipedia revision 1376389608

Adapted in part from W. Somerset Maugham by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.