Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “William Somerset Maugham” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

William Somerset Maugham 

(1874 – 1965)

William Somerset Maugham was an English author noted as an expert storyteller and a master of fiction technique. He was born in Paris as the sixth and youngest son of the solicitor to the British embassy. He learned French as his native tongue. An introvert child afflicted with a stammer, Maugham was orphaned at 10 and went to live with his uncle, a vicar. Although he later studied medicine and completed his internship, he never practiced, having decided at an early age to devote himself to literature. Maugham lived in Paris for ten years as a struggling young author. In 1897 appeared his first novel, Liza Of Lambeth, which drew on his experiences of attending women in childbirth.

His first play, A Man. Of Honour, was produced in 1903. Four of his plays ran simultaneously in London in 1904. Maugham’s break-ti-rough novel was the semi-autobiographical Of Human Bondage (-1915), which is usually considered his outstanding achievement. The story follows the childhood, youth, and early manhood of Philip Carey, who is born with a clubfoot. Philip never knew his father and his mother only for a brief space. He is raised by a religious aunt and uncle, but the real process of his education, after the end of an unsatisfactory social life, begins in Heidelberg. Philip goes to Paris to study art, and at the age of thirty he qualifies as a doctor. Finally he marries Sally Athelny, a normal, healthy, happy girl. Maugham wrote with wit and irony, frequently expressing a cynical attitude toward life. Famous as a dramatist before he became known for his novels and short stories, he achieved his first success with the sardonically humorous play Lady Frederick (1907). This was followed by a series of commercial successes, the best being The Circle (1921), Our Betters (1923), and The Constant Wife (1927). He had written eight novels before his masterpiece, the partly autobiographical Of Human Bondage (1915), appeared. It is the story of the painful growth to self-re‘alization of a lonely, sensitive young physician with a clubfoot. Maugham’s other famous novels include The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of the French painter Paul Gauguin; Cakes and Ale (1930), satirizing Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole; and The Razor’s Edge (1944), dealing with a young American’s search for spiritual fulfillment. Frequently his writings, notably the short stories Miss Thompson and The Letter, use as background the exotic places he had visited. In his later work Maugham limited himself primarily to essays; The Art of Fiction: An Introduction to Ten Novels and Their Authors (1955) is representative.