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William Somerset Maugham , CH (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.
After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full time.
During World War I, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.
Maugham's father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris, France. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil. His grandfather, another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the English Law Society. It was taken for granted that Maugham and his brothers would follow in their footsteps. His elder brother Viscount Maugham enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939.
Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), had tuberculosis (TB), a condition for which her doctor prescribed childbirth. She had Maugham several years after the last of his three older brothers; they were already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three. The youngest, he was effectively raised as an only child.
Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died of TB six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized; he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life. Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died in France of cancer.
Maugham was sent to the UK to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable, in Kent. The move was damaging, as Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel. The boy attended The King's School, Canterbury, which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. Maugham developed a stammer that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance.
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. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year in Heidelberg, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of Giacomo Meyerbeer, an opera composer.
On Maugham's return to Britain, his uncle found his nephew a position in an accountant's office, but after a month, Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle set about finding Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers, and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps. A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. His uncle rejected the civil service, not because of the young man's feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen; a recent law required applicants to pass an entry examination. The local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle agreed.
Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham felt the contrary. He was living in the great city of London, meeting people of a "low" sort whom he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."
Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he wrote his second book, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a South London slum. Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "...it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue."
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 on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."
The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and to live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed in 1907 with the success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.
Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men[citation needed], he also had sexual relationships with a number of women. He had an affair with Syrie Wellcome, the wife of Henry Wellcome, the American-born English pharmaceutical magnate. They had a daughter named Mary Elizabeth Wellcome, (1915–1998). Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.[citation needed]
In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married. Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator who in the 1920s popularized "the all-white room." Their daughter was familiarly called Liza and her surname was changed to Maugham.
Syrie finally divorced him in 1929, finding his relationship and travels with Haxton too difficult to live with.
About author and audiobooks:
Code:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham |
Novels
W. Somerset Maugham - Ashenden Or The British Agent (read by Unknown reader)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Magician (read by Fredrick Davidson)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Moon And Sixpence (read by Robert Hardy)
W. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (read by Sean Barrett)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Painted Veil (read by Sophie Ward)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Razor's Edge (read by Frank Muller)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Narrow Corner (read by Eric Bamastald)
W. Somerset Maugham - Theatre (read by Burnett Meis)
W. Somerset Maugham - Three Early Novels (read by Michael Russotto)
*Liza of Lambeth
*Mrs. Craddock
*The Magician
Code:
http://rapidgator.net/file/9a4b7a99fb1a64631abe3845e99d9d43/Ashenden_Or_The_British_Agent.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/aac57f1bb89a74ba90efd883e001bc5a/The_Magician.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/04f848d952e9aa195d2f5dce02c8e3cd/The_Moon_And_Sixpence.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/2b8c38f61f39378e553bcacd2289a2cd/Of_Human_Bondage.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/c1b5dc24037dcd2c21d0f3d2cf99eb50/The_Painted_Veil.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/a386c25e63e402708572fa3b1594a84b/The_Razors_Edge.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/06cda7b7d1ffa7f9769aa91afaa5d975/The_Narrow_Corner.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/3470aeefdaecc610768b53c15964b9e0/Theatre.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/9ddc2f1ad08cf2a2baa50a11d22b71ab/Three_Early_Novels.rar.html |
Short Story Collections and Others
W. Somerset Maugham - Ten (read by Rosalind Ayres)
W. Somerset Maugham - The Summing Up (read by David Case)
W. Somerset Maugham - Far Eastern Tales (read by Robert Powell)
W. Somerset Maugham - Collected Stories (read by read by Various narrators)
W. Somerset Maugham - Short Stories Vol 1 (read by Charlton Griffin)
W. Somerset Maugham - Short Stories Vol 2 (read by Charlton Griffin)
Code:
http://rapidgator.net/file/b64ff2b5a45b5d2b253e075dac136472/Ten.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/dc5b7d01f460c85fd041437c95902bc0/The_Summing_Up.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/0c3b6a3f5e8859fecfc262f9811ccd5d/Far_Eastern_Tales.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/7c1378f57d8699c967d4af2ca6aa77a1/Collected_Stories.part1.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/5bc4114a10a3a3c4279745c45b0b585f/Collected_Stories.part2.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/f6e92c9c7d7190af23d2ec4846fcfea5/Short_Stories_Vol_1.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/ea43f72179a409a3205f323fd7d41370/Short_Stories_Vol_2.rar.html |
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