W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 in Paris, where his father was a prosperous solicitor. His mother died just after his eighth birthday and his father two and a half years later, and he was sent to England to live with an uncle, the vicar of Whitstable in Kent. There he became shy and developed a lifelong stammer. He studied in Heidelberg, Germany, and then trained as a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital in London. He qualified in 1897 but never practised; his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), drew on the slums around the hospital. By 1908 he had four plays running in London at the same time. During the First World War he was a volunteer ambulance driver in France and later worked for British intelligence. His partly autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915) is considered his finest work. He travelled widely in Asia and the South Seas, which provided settings for many of his short stories and for The Moon and Sixpence (1919). From the late 1920s he lived mainly at Cap Ferrat, on the French Riviera. He died in 1965.

W. Somerset Maugham is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Lost his childhood faith after his prayers went unanswered. Source: Wikipedia