Maugham, who had qualified as a medic, dropped medicine and embarked on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He proved a devoted (if not a stimulating) companion. His first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. He proofread Of Human Bondage at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties. He kept his mother's photograph at his bedside for the rest of his life. It was adapted into a major motion picture, released in 1946, starring Tyrone Power as Larry Darrell, with Herbert Marshall as W. Somerset Maugham. Il fut l'un des écrivains britanniques les plus populaires de son époque. He was a jocular character, always engaging but could be mischievous. Persuasion by Jane Austen. Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), was a departure for him in many ways. The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). [33] In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland, as one of the network of British agents who operated against the Berlin Committee, whose members included Virendranath Chattopadhyay, an Indian revolutionary trying to resist colonial Britain's rule of India. If you love or hate any of the authors on the list please take a minute and write a review of them or any of thier works. Critiques littéraires, livres de voyage et autres publications, It was France that educated me, France that taught me to value beauty, distinction, wit and good sense, France that taught me to write. [4] Maugham refers to this grandfather's writings in chapter 6 of his literary memoir The Summing Up:[5]. En 1915, année de la naissance de sa fille Liza, il entame une liaison avec Gerald Haxton, jeune Américain de vingt-trois ans, qui se poursuivra jusqu'à la mort de ce dernier en 1944. In 1938, he visited the Hindu sage Ramana Maharishi at his ashram in India, after whom he modeled the spiritual guru of his 1944 novel The Razor's Edge.[39][40]. It was Maugham's eighth birthday. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of the First World War, who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, travelling to India seeking enlightenment. A second film adaptation was released in 1940, starring American actress Bette Davis, who was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance. In 1951, Katherine Cornell was a great success playing the lead in Maugham's comedy The Constant Wife. William Blake; Previous Lists ; Other Best 100 Lists ; Discuss This List In The Forums * NEW * Please take a few seconds and vote for your favorite authors of all time. The move was emotionally damaging, as Henry Maugham was cold and emotionally cruel. Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and the orphaned boy was raised by a paternal uncle, who was emotionally cold. After Maugham's return to Britain, his uncle found him a position in an accountant's office. In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style. He had a pleasant face and happily took care of his two younger brothers. Pendant sa longue carrière d'écrivain, Maugham publie des comédies, des romans psychologiques, des récits d'espionnage et plus de cent nouvelles. [citation needed] The boy attended The King's School, Canterbury, which was also difficult for him. The memoir cost him several friends and exposed him to much public ridicule. By 1940, when the collapse of France and its occupation by the German Third Reich forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera, he was a refugee—but one of the wealthiest and most famous writers in the English-speaking world. On his death, Maugham donated his royalties to the Royal Literary Fund.[60]. In private, Maugham espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish refugees, noting that "the Gestapo is known to have had spies among refugees, and these have not seldom been Jews". Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination. In 1897, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. [9] Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. En 1897, il obtient son diplôme de médecine mais tente de vivre de sa plume. Maugham said that he remained agnostic to the questions concerning the existence of God. Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. William Somerset Maugham CH (/mɔːm/ MAWM; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. La dernière modification de cette page a été faite le 8 mars 2021 à 01:06. He continued to be highly productive, writing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. En 1895, âgé de vingt et un ans, étudiant en médecine à Londres, il voit Oscar Wilde, qu’il admire. P. Paradise Lost by John Milton. Deux ans plus tard, son père meurt d'un cancer. William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. With that completed, he was eager to assist the war effort again. by W. Somerset Maugham. This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s that inspired his novels. Dès lors, Maugham décide de vivre sa vie affective hors de ce pays si rigoriste. His family assumed that Maugham and his brothers would be lawyers. Maugham lived in Switzerland as a writer. [13], Liza of Lambeth's first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material which the author drew from for his fiction. [7] The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized. [33][34] It was part of an attempt to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war, by countering German pacifist propaganda. Maugham's supernatural thriller The Magician (1908) based its principal character on the well-known and somewhat disreputable Aleister Crowley. After a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. I see no need of such idea. He later said: "I took to it as a duck takes to water."[14]. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King's School, Canterbury. W. Somerset Maugham, in full William Somerset Maugham, (born Jan. 25, 1874, Paris, France—died Dec. 16, 1965, Nice), English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature. He later lived in the South. Maugham insisted that the book was more invention than fact. Il passera la seconde partie de sa vie avec Alan Searle (1905-1985), surnommé le « bronzino boy » (rencontré en 1928), qui veillera sur lui avec beaucoup de tendresse jusqu'à la fin. [citation needed]. Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), contracted tuberculosis, a condition for which her physician prescribed childbirth. William Somerset Maugham [ˈsʌməsɪt mɔːm], (Paris, 25 janvier 1874 – Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 16 décembre 1965) est un romancier, nouvelliste et dramaturge britannique.Il fut l'un des écrivains britanniques les plus populaires de son époque. Maugham developed a stammer that stayed with him all his life. [10] He also wrote his first book there, a biography of Giacomo Meyerbeer, an opera composer.[11]. [33][36], Maugham used his spying experiences as the basis for Ashenden: Or the British Agent, a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy. By the time Maugham was three, his older brothers were all away at boarding school. [54] In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality.[57]. He rejected a career in the Church because of his stutter. The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. De 1885 à 1889, il étudie à la King’s School de Cantorbéry. “As William White once said, the greatest barrier to communication is the illusion of it in the mind of the sender,” Pyron said. His uncle tried to find Maugham a new profession. Venkataramiah, Munagala, 15 October 1938, This page was last edited on 6 April 2021, at 16:15. « It was France that educated me, France that taught me to value beauty, distinction, wit and good sense, France that taught me to write[4]. Il a huit ans lorsque sa mère meurt à quarante et un ans de la tuberculose, après avoir accouché d’un fils mort-né. Traumatisé par cette disparition, Somerset gardera la photo de sa mère dans sa chambre toute sa vie. Le salon familial accueille écrivains et peintres, l'appartement est riche en livres et objets d'art. Univ. and as homosexual. He wrote only one book that was not of this character. Bd. His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. The fiction section has the complete, fully searchable texts of hundreds of novels.. "[45], Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. ~~~ Mark Twain ... Ein leidenschaftlicher Raucher, der immer von der Gefahr des Rauchens für die Gesundheit liest, hört in den meisten Fällen auf - … Ray Bradbury. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. En 1894, il effectue un voyage en Italie, avec escale à Paris lors de vacances universitaires. Picture of Dorian Gray, The by Oscar Wilde. William Somerset Maugham was born to English parents Robert Ormond Maugham and Edith Mary, on 25th January 1874, in the UK Embassy in Paris. [61] George Orwell said that Maugham was "the modern writer who has influenced me the most, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills". Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed that he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgment and the ability to avoid being deceived by facile appearances. Son premier roman, Servitude humaine (Of Human Bondage), venant de paraître, le SIS estime que son activité d'auteur pourrait lui servir de couverture à ses activités d'espionnage et il est ainsi envoyé à Genève. [18], Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in Baruch Spinoza's Ethics:[19]. En 1892, il entreprend des études de médecine. "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation" are considered especially notable. Confié à des gouvernantes françaises, il ne fréquente que des petits Parisiens de bonne famille, passe l'été à Trouville, l'hiver à Pau avec sa mère, beauté[2] et modèle de piété, qu'il vénère. Ces morts précoces auraient déclenché le bégaiement sévère qui l'affligea toute sa vie. The play was adapted as a film by the same name in 1929. [6], Maugham has been described both as bisexual[22][23][24] "Rain", in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its reputation. Haxton appears as Tony Paxton in Maugham's 1917 play, Her birth name is recorded as Mary Elizabeth Wellcome in the immigration and naturalization files of, sfn error: no target: CITEREFMeyers2010 (, “I remain an agnostic, and the practical outcome of agnosticism is that you act as though God did not exist”, Maugham wrote in his memoir, “I'm glad I don't believe in God. [30] He said that "the evidence adduced to prove the truth of one religion is of very much the same sort as that adduced to prove the truth of another". Maugham gave Philip Carey a club foot (rather than his stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of Whitstable; and Carey is a medic. It might be outdated or ideologically biased. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. Enjoy the best W. Somerset Maugham Quotes at BrainyQuote. Maugham himself denied any intention of doing this in a long letter to Walpole:[58] "I certainly never intended Alroy Kear to be a portrait of you. His elder brother, Viscount Maugham, did become a lawyer, enjoying a distinguished legal career and serving as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939. Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator, who in the 1920s popularized "the all-white room". Maugham's play The Letter, starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927. On s'attendait donc à ce que l’enfant marchât sur leurs traces. William Somerset Maugham [ˈsʌməsɪt mɔːm], (Paris, 25 janvier 1874 – Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 16 décembre 1965) est un romancier, nouvelliste et dramaturge britannique. ...in the catalogue of the Library at the British Museum there is a long list of his legal works. He wrote a critique of the novel, charging Maugham with plagiarism, in a review published in Vanity Fair. His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley. At age 16, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high-ranking intelligence officer known as "R"; he was recruited by John Wallinger. Le premier auteur qu’il lit est Jean de La Fontaine, dont il récite les fables à sa mère à l’heure du thé[3]. He is made up of a dozen people and the greater part of him is myself"—yet in an introduction written for the 1950 Modern Library edition of the work, he plainly states that Walpole was the inspiration for Kear (while denying that Thomas Hardy was the inspiration for the novelist Driffield). He next lived with Alan Searle until his own death in 1965. Ce fut en fait son frère aîné Frederic Herbert Maugham qui embrassa la carrière juridique et fut lord chancelier entre 1938 et 1939. Maugham was the fourth of six sons born in his family. For the next five years, he studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in Lambeth. [8] Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died in France of cancer. Maugham est nommé dans l'Ordre des compagnons d'honneur, CH, le 10 juin 1954 (London Gazette du 10 juin)[13]. The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master ... so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he see the better before him. “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1429, eBookIt.com 29 Copy quote. Best 100 Authors … [38], In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin. By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. This changed in 1907 with the success of his play Lady Frederick. The greatest problem of communication is the illusion that it has been achieved. Somerset Maugham est bisexuel[7],[8],[9] ; sa vie personnelle a été à ce propos parfois rapprochée de celle d'Oscar Wilde[10]. Both his father and grandfather were lawyers; his father handled legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris. 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