Somerset Maugham - biography, facts, quotes - The burden of human passions. Somerset maugham (william somerset maugham)

William Somerset Maugham (English William Somerset Maugham [ˈsʌməsɪt mɔːm]; January 25, 1874, Paris - December 16, 1965, Nice)- English writer, one of the most successful prose writers of the 1930s, an agent of British intelligence.

Maugham was born in the family of a diplomat, orphaned early, brought up in the family of an uncle who was a priest and a boarding school for boys "King's School"; studied medicine, received a medical degree. After the success of his first book, Lisa of Lambeth (1897), he decided to leave medicine and become a writer. This period of his life is indirectly reflected in his novels The Burden of Human Passions (1915) and Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930). Several novels written after that did not bring money, and Maugham turned to dramaturgy. After the resounding success of the comedy "Lady Frederick" (1907), Maugham became a successful author. From that time on, he often and extensively traveled around the world, in particular, performing the task of British intelligence in 1916-1917, he also visited Russia, which he told about in the collection of short stories "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (1928). In the same year, he bought a villa on the French Riviera and lived there permanently, except for the period from October 1940 to mid-1946. The urn with Maugham's ashes, according to his will, is buried near the wall of the King's School library, created with his money and bearing his name.

Playwright and essayist. Maugham owns light comedies of characters and situations, evil satires on morals and socio-psychological dramas such as "For Merit" (1932) with sharp conflict and an accurate depiction of historical time. His plays - about 30 of them were staged in 1903-1933 - are distinguished by dynamic action, careful development of mise-en-scenes, and compact lively dialogue. However, the writer's main contribution to literature is short stories, novels and essays, including the book Summing Up (1938), in which a free essay on literature and art, a careful author's confession and an aesthetic treatise are fused into a remarkable artistic whole.

Narrator. Exquisite mastery of form - a well-built plot, strict selection of material, capacitance of detail, dialogue natural as breathing, virtuoso mastery of the semantic and sound richness of the native language, relaxed conversational and at the same time restrained, imperceptibly skeptical intonation of the narration, clear, economical, simple style - makes Maugham a classic of the 20th century short story. The variety of characters, types, positions, conflicts, the conjugation of pathology and norms, good and evil, terrible and funny, everyday life and exoticism turn his novelistic heritage (the complete collection of stories prepared by him in 1953 includes 91 works) into a kind of "human tragicomedy". However, this code is softened by endless tolerance, wise irony and a fundamental unwillingness to act as a judge of one's neighbor. In Maugham's life, as it were, tells itself, judges itself and passes a moral sentence, while the author is nothing more than an observer and chronicler of what is depicted.

Novelist. The virtues of objective writing and brilliant style, to which Somerset Maugham owes in no small measure his love of the masters of French prose, are also inherent in his best novels. In addition to "Burden", this is a novel about the artist "Moon and a penny" (1919) and a novel about an actress "The Theater" (1937), which together with the novel about the writer "Pies and Beer" form something like a trilogy about the creators of art, its meaning and attitude To real life, as well as "Patterned Veil" (1925), "Christmas Holiday" (1939) and "Razor's Edge" (1944). Behind the relationships of the characters, the clashes of their aspirations, passions and natures, Maugham clearly shows an artistic and philosophical analysis of some of the "eternal" themes of world literature: the meaning of life, love, death, the essence of beauty, the purpose of art. Constantly returning to the problem of the comparative value of the moral and the beautiful that worried him, Maugham in each case, albeit in different ways, gave preference to the first, as is clear from the logic of the images he created: "... most of all beauty lies in a life well lived. This - the highest work of art "(" Patterned cover "). The life of Larry Darrell, the main character in Maugham's final novel, The Razor's Edge, is the artistic embodiment of this highest form of beauty.

Source encyclopedia of the company "KIRILL and METHODIUS" and Wikipedia.org

Name: Somerset Maugham (William Somerset Maugham)

Age: 91 years old

Activity: writer

Family status: was divorced

Somerset Maugham: biography

Somerset Maugham is the author of 21 novels, short story writer and playwright, critic and socialite who moved in the highest circles of London, New York and Paris. The writer worked in the genre of realism, focusing on the traditions of naturalism, modernism and neo-romanticism.

Childhood and youth

William Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874. The son of a lawyer at the British Embassy in Paris, he spoke French before he mastered English. The Somerset family was youngest child. The three brothers were much older, and at the time of their departure to study in England, the boy was left alone in his parents' house.

He spent a lot of time with his mother and was attached to her. The mother died of tuberculosis when the child was 8 years old. This loss was the greatest shock in Maugham's life. Experiences provoked a speech impediment: Somerset began to stutter. This feature remained with him for the rest of his life.

The father died when the boy was 10 years old. The family broke up. The older brothers studied law at Cambridge, and Somerset was sent under the tutelage of an uncle priest, in whose house his youth passed.

The child grew up lonely and withdrawn. Children brought up in England did not accept him. Maugham's French-speaking stutter and accent were ridiculed. On this basis, shyness grew stronger. The boy had no friends. Books became the only outlet for the future writer, who studied at a boarding school.

At the age of 15, Somerset persuaded his uncle to let him go to Germany to study German language. Heidelberg became the place where he first felt free. The young man listened to lectures on philosophy, studied drama and became interested in theater. Somerset's interests concerned creativity, Spinoza, and.

Maugham returned to the UK at the age of 18. He had a sufficient level of education to choose a future profession. His uncle directed him to the path of the clergy, but Somerset chose to go to London, where from 1892 he became a student at the medical school at St. Thomas' Hospital.

Literature

The study of medicine and medical practice made of Somerset not only a certified doctor, but also a person who saw people through and through. Medicine left its mark on the style of the writer. He rarely used metaphors and hyperbole.

The first steps in literature were weak, since there were no people among Maugham's acquaintances who could direct him on the right path. He was engaged in the translation of Ibsen's works in order to study the technique of creating dramaturgy, he wrote stories. In 1897, the first novel, Lisa of Lambeth, was published.

Analyzing the works of Fielding, Flaubert, the writer also focused on current trends. He worked hard and fruitfully, gradually becoming one of the most widely read authors. His books sold quickly, bringing income to the writer.

Maugham studied people, using their destinies and characters in his work. He believed that the most interesting lies in everyday life. This was confirmed by the novel "Lisa of Lambeth", in which the influence of creativity was felt.

In the novel "Mrs. Craddock" one could see the author's passion for prose. For the first time he asked questions about life and love. Maugham's plays made him a wealthy man. The premiere of Lady Frederick in 1907 established him as a playwright.

Maugham adhered to the traditions sung by the Restoration theater. Comedies were authoritative for him. Maugham's plays are divided into comic, where ideas similar to reflections are voiced, and dramatic, reflecting social problems.

Maugham's work reflected the experience of participation in the First and Second World Wars. The author reflected his vision in the works “For military merit”, “On the razor's edge”. During the war years, Maugham visited the auto-sanitary unit in France, intelligence, who worked in Switzerland and in Russia. In the final, he ended up in Scotland, where he was treated for tuberculosis.

The writer traveled a lot, visited different countries of Europe and Asia, Africa and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. It enriched him inner world and gave impressions that he used in his work. The life of Somerset Maugham was full of events and interesting facts.

"The burden of human passions" and autobiographical work"On Human Slavery" - novels in which these categories are combined. In the novel "Moon and a penny" Maugham talks about the artist's tragedy, in "Colored Cover" - about the fate of a scientist, and in "Theater" - about the everyday life of an actress.

Novels and stories by Somerset Maugham are distinguished by sharp plots and psychologism. The author keeps the reader in suspense and uses the technique of surprise. The presence of the author's "I" in the works is their traditional feature.

Personal life

Critics and biographers have debated the ambiguity of Maugham's persona. His first biographers spoke of the writer as a man with a bad temper, a cynic and a misogynist, unable to accept criticism. A smart, ironic and hardworking writer purposefully made his way to literary heights.

He focused not on intellectuals and aesthetes, but on those for whom his works were relevant. Maugham banned the coverage of personal correspondence after his death. The ban was lifted in 2009. This made some of the nuances of his life more understandable.

There were two women in the writer's life. He was very fond of Ethelwyn Jones, known as Sue Jones. Her image is used in the novel "Pies and Beer". The daughter of a popular playwright, Ethelwyn was a successful 23-year-old actress when she met Maugham. She had just divorced her husband and quickly succumbed to the pressure of the writer's advances.

Miss Jones was famous for her easy disposition and availability. Maugham didn't think it was vicious. At first, he did not plan a wedding, but soon changed his mind. The writer was refused a marriage proposal. The girl was pregnant by someone else.

Somerset Maugham married Siri Mogam, the daughter of a philanthropist known for his philanthropic work. Siri managed to be married. At 22, she married Henry Wellcome, who was 48. The man was the owner of a pharmaceutical corporation.

The family quickly fell apart due to his wife's infidelity with the owner of a chain of London department stores. Maugham met the girl in 1911. In their union, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born. At that time, Siri was not divorced from Wellcome. Communication with Maugham was scandalous. The girl attempted suicide because of claims ex-husband for divorce.

Maugham acted like a gentleman and married Siri, although feelings for her quickly disappeared. Soon the couple began to live separately. In 1929, their official divorce took place. Today, Maugham's bisexuality is no secret to anyone, which is neither confirmed nor denied by his biographers.

The union with Gerald Haxton confirmed the writer's hobbies. Somerset Maugham was 40 and his companion was 22. For 30 years, Haxton accompanied Maugham as travel secretary. He drank, gambled, and spent Maugham's money.

The writer used Haxton's acquaintances as prototypes for his works. It is known that Gerald even looked for new partners for Maugham. One of these men was David Posner.

The seventeen-year-old boy met Maugham in 1943, when he was 69 years old. Haxton died of pulmonary edema and was succeeded by Alan Searle, an admirer and new lover of the writer. In 1962, Maugham formally adopted his secretary, depriving his daughter Elizabeth of her inheritance rights. But the daughter managed to defend her legal rights, and the court declared the adoption invalid.

Death

Somerset Maugham died of pneumonia at the age of 92. It happened on December 15, 1965 in the provincial French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, not far from Nice. Contrary to French law, the patient who died within the walls of the hospital was not subjected to an autopsy, but was transported home and the next day an official declaration of death was made.

Relatives and friends of the writer said that he had found his last refuge in his beloved villa. The writer does not have a burial, as a cremation was carried out. The ashes of Maugham were scattered at the walls of the library at the Royal School in Canterbury. This place bears his name.

Bibliography

• 1897 - "Lisa of Lambeth"
• 1901 - "Hero"
• 1902 - "Mrs. Craddock"
• 1904 - "Carousel"
• 1908 - "Mag"
• 1915 - "The burden of human passions"
• 1919 - "Moon and penny"
• 1922 - "On a Chinese screen"
• 1925 - "Patterned cover"
• 1930 - "Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet"
• 1931 - "Six stories written in the first person"
• 1937 - "Theater"
• 1939 - "Christmas Holidays"
• 1944 - "Razor's Edge"
• 1948 - "Catalina"

Quotes

Quotes, aphorisms and sayings of the witty Maugham are relevant today. They comment life situations, the perception of people, the author's position and his attitude to his own work.

“Before writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I unconsciously follow this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”

“I wouldn’t go to see my plays at all, neither on the evening of the premiere, nor on any other evening, if I didn’t consider it necessary to check their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them.”

“Dying is a terribly boring and painful occupation. My advice to you: avoid anything like that.”

“The funny thing about life is that if you refuse to accept anything but the very best, then very often that’s what you get.”

Biography

"I was not born a writer, I became one." Sixty-five years - the time of the literary activity of the venerable English author: prose writer, playwright, essayist, literary critic Somerset Maugham. maugham found Eternal values capable of giving meaning to the life of an individual mortal person, in Beauty and Goodness. Connected by birth and upbringing with the top of the "middle class", it was this class and its morality that he made the main target of his caustic irony. One of the wealthiest writers of his time, he denounced the power of money over man. Maugham is easy to read, but behind this ease lie painstaking work on style, high professionalism, culture of thought and word. The writer invariably opposed the deliberate complexity of the form, the deliberate ambiguity of the expression of thought, especially in cases where incomprehensibility "...dresses itself in the clothes of aristocracy." "The style of the book should be simple enough so that any, somewhat educated person, can read it with ease ..." - he embodied these recommendations in his own work all his life.

The writer, William Somerset Maugham, was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris. The writer's father was a co-owner of a law firm and a legal attache at the British Embassy. The mother, a famous beauty, kept a salon that attracted many celebrities from the world of art and politics. In Summing Up, Maugham says of her parents: "She was an extremely beautiful woman, and he was an extremely ugly man. I was told that in Paris they were called Beauty and the Beast."

Parents carefully thought out the appearance of Maugham into the world. In France, a law was being prepared, according to which all young men born in the territory of this country were subject to mandatory conscription into the army upon reaching the age of majority. It was impossible to admit the thought that their son, an Englishman by blood, in a couple of decades would fight on the side of the French against his compatriots. This could have been avoided in one way - the birth of a child on the territory of the embassy, ​​which legally means - birth on the territory of England.

In the Somerset family, William was the fourth child. As a child, the boy spoke only French, but he began to learn English only after he was suddenly orphaned. When Maugham was only eight years old, in February 1882, Maugham's mother died of consumption. And two years later, his father passes away due to stomach cancer. Mother's maid became William's nanny; The boy took the death of his parents very hard.

In the English city of Whitstable, in the county of Kent, William's uncle, Henry Maugham, a parish priest, lived, who sheltered the boy. It was not the best time in the life of young Maugham. His uncle turned out to be quite a callous person. It was difficult for the boy to establish relations with new relatives, because. he did not speak English. Constant stress in the house of Puritan relatives caused William to become ill: he began to stutter, and this remained with Maugham for the rest of his life.

Maugham about himself: "I was small in stature; hardy, but not physically strong; I stuttered, was shy and in poor health. I had no inclination for sports, which occupies such an important place in the life of the British; these reasons, or from birth - I instinctively shunned people, which prevented me from getting along with them.

The Royal School in Canterbury, where William studied, also became a test for young Maugham: he was constantly teased for his poor English and short stature, inherited from his father. The reader can get an idea about these years of his life from two novels - The Burden of Human Passions (1915) and Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet (1929).

Moving to Germany with admission to the University of Heidelberg was for Maugham an escape from the hard life in Canterbury. At the university, Maugham begins to study literature and philosophy. Here he improves his English. It was at the University of Heidelberg that Maugham wrote his first work, a biography of the German composer Meerbeer. But the manuscript was rejected by the publisher, and a disappointed Maugham decides to burn it. Maugham was then in his 17th year.

At the insistence of his uncle, Somerset returns to England and gets a job as an accountant, but after a month of work, the young man quits and goes back to Whitstable. A career in the church sphere was also unattainable for William - due to a speech defect. Therefore, the future writer decided to devote himself entirely to his studies and his vocation - literature.

In 1892, Somerset entered the medical school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. He continued to study, and at night he worked on his new creations. In 1897, Maugham received a diploma in medicine and surgery; worked at St. Thomas' Hospital in a poor quarter of London. The writer reflected this experience in his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897). The book was popular with experts and the public, and the first printings were sold out within a few weeks. This was enough to convince Maugham to leave medicine and become a writer.

In 1903, Maugham wrote the first play, A Man of Honor, and later five more plays were written - Lady Frederick (1907), Jack Straw (1908), Smith (1909), Nobility (1910), " Bread and Fish (1911), which were staged in London and then in New York.

By 1914, Somerset Maugham, thanks to his plays and novels, was already a well-known person. Moral and aesthetic criticism world of the bourgeois in almost all of Maugham's works is a very subtle, caustic and ironic debunking of snobbery, based on a careful selection of characteristic words, gestures, features of the character's appearance and psychological reactions.

When World War I broke out, Maugham was serving in France as a member of the British Red Cross, the so-called Literary Ambulance Drivers, a group of 23 famous writers. Employees of the famous British intelligence MI5 decide to use the famous writer and playwright for their own purposes. Maugham agreed to perform a delicate intelligence mission, which he later described in his autobiographical notes and in the collection Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928). Alfred Hitchcock used several passages from this text in The Secret Agent (1936). Maugham was sent to a number of European countries for secret negotiations in order to prevent them from withdrawing from the war. With the same purpose, and also with the task of helping the Provisional Government to stay in power, he arrived in Russia after the February Revolution. Not without a fair amount of self-irony, Maugham, already at the end of his journey, wrote that this mission was ungrateful and obviously doomed, and he himself was a useless "missionary".

The further path of the special agent lay in the United States. There, the writer met a man whose love the writer carried through his whole life. The man was Frederick Gerald Haxton, an American born in San Francisco but raised in England, who later became his personal secretary and lover. Maugham was bisexual. The writer, Beaverley Nicole, one of his old friends, testifies: "Maugham was not a 'pure' homosexual. He certainly had love affairs with women, and there was no sign of feminine behavior or feminine mannerisms."

Maugham: "Let those who like me accept me as I am, and the rest do not accept at all."

Maugham had love affairs with famous women - with Violet Hunt, a famous feminist, editor of Free Woman magazine; with Sasha Kropotkina, daughter of Pyotr Kropotkin, a well-known Russian anarchist who lived at that time in exile in London.

But only two women played an important role in Maugham's life. The first was Ethelwyn Jones, the daughter of the famous playwright, better known as Sue Jones. Maugham loved her very much. He called her Rosie, and it was under this name that she entered as one of the characters in his novel "Pies and Beer". When Maugham met her, she had recently divorced her husband and was already satisfied with the popular actress. At first he did not want to marry her, and when he proposed to her, he was stunned - she refused him. It turned out that Sue was already pregnant by another man, the son of the Earl of Entrim. She soon married him.

Another woman of the writer was Sayri Barnardo Wellcome; her father was widely known for having founded an entire network of shelters for homeless children. Maugham met her in 1911. Sairi already had an unsuccessful family life. After some time, Sayri and Maugham were already inseparable. They had a daughter, whom they named Elizabeth. Sayri's husband found out about her affair with Maugham and filed for divorce. Sairi attempted suicide but survived. When Sayri divorced, Maugham did what he considered the only right way out of the situation: he married her. Sairi actually loved Maugham, and he quickly lost interest in her. In one of his letters, he wrote: “I married you because I thought that this was the only thing I could do for you and for Elizabeth to give you happiness and security. I didn’t marry you because that he loved you so much, and you know it very well." Soon, Maugham and Sayri began to live separately. She became a famous interior designer. A few years later, Sayri filed for divorce, and received it in 1929.

Maugham: "I have loved many women, but I have never known the bliss of mutual love."

Throughout this time, Maugham did not stop writing.

A real breakthrough was the almost autobiographical novel "On Human Slavery" (Russian translation "The Burden of Human Passions", 1915), which is considered Maugham's best work. original name The book "Beauty for Ashes" (a quote from the prophet Isaiah) was previously used by someone and therefore was replaced. "On Human Slavery" is the title of one of the chapters of Spinoza's Ethics.

The novel initially received unfavorable reviews from critics in both America and England. Only the influential critic and writer, Theodor Dreiser, appreciated the new novel, calling it a work of genius and even comparing it to Beethoven's symphony. This summary raised the book to unprecedented heights - since then this novel has been in print without interruption. The close relationship between the fictional and the non-fictional has become Maugham's trademark. A little later, in 1938, he admitted: "Reality and fiction are so mixed up in my work that now, looking back, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."

In 1916, Maugham travels to Polynesia to collect material for his future novel The Moon and the Penny (1919), based on the biography of Paul Gauguin. "I found both beauty and romance, but I also found something I didn't expect: a new me." These travels were to forever establish the writer in the popular imagination as a chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific.

In 1922, Maugham appeared on Chinese television with his book of 58 mini-stories collected during a 1920 trip through China and Hong Kong.

Somerset Maugham never, even being already a recognized master, did not allow himself to present to the public a “raw” or, for some reason, not satisfying thing. He strictly followed the realistic principles of composition and character building, which he considered to be the most appropriate for the warehouse of his talent: "The plot that the author tells must be clear and convincing; it must have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the end should naturally follow from the beginning.. Just like the behavior and speech of a character should follow from his character. "

In the twenties, Maugham continues a successful career as a playwright. His plays, including The Circle (1921) - a satire on society, Our Best (1923) - about Americans in Europe, and The Regular Wife (1927) - about a wife who takes revenge on an unfaithful husband, and "Sheppey" (1933) - staged in Europe and the USA.

The villa at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera was purchased by Maugham in 1928 and became one of the great literary and social salons, as well as a home for the rest of the writer's life. Winston Churchill, Herbert Wells sometimes visited the writer, and sometimes Soviet writers "came" here. His work continued to be replenished with plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, Somerset Maugham had already become one of the most famous and wealthy writers of English fiction. Maugham did not hide the fact that he writes "neither for the sake of money, but in order to get rid of the ideas, characters, types that haunt his imagination, but, at the same time, does not mind at all if creativity provides him, among other things, with the opportunity to write what he wants and be his own master."

In 1944, Maugham's novel "The Razor's Edge" was published. For most of World War II, Maugham, now in his sixties, was based in the United States, first in Hollywood, where he worked extensively on scripts and revised them, and later in the South.

His longtime associate and lover, Gerald Haxton, died in 1944; after which Maugham moved to England, and then, in 1946, to his villa in France, where he lived between frequent and long travels. After losing Haxton, Maugham rekindles his intimate relationship with Alan Searle, a kind young man from the slums of London. Maugham first met him back in 1928, when he worked for a charitable organization at the hospital. Alan becomes the writer's new secretary. Searle adored Maugham, and William had only warm feelings for him. In 1962, Maugham formally adopted Alan Searle, forfeiting his daughter Elizabeth because he heard rumors that she was going to limit his property rights through the courts, due to his incapacity. Elizabeth, through the courts, obtained recognition of her right to the inheritance, and Maugham's adoption of Searle became invalid.

In 1947, the writer approved the Somerset Maugham Prize, which was awarded to the best English writers under the age of thirty-five.

Maugham gave up traveling when he felt that they could give him nothing more. "I had nowhere else to change. The arrogance of culture flew off me. I accepted the world as it is. I learned tolerance. I wanted freedom for myself and was ready to give it to others." After 1948, Maugham left the dramaturgy and fiction, wrote essays, mostly on literary topics.

"The artist has no reason to treat other people down. He is a fool if he imagines that his knowledge is somehow more important, and a cretin if he does not know how to approach each person as an equal." This and other similar statements in the book "Summing up" (1938), which later sounded in such works of an essay-autobiographical plan as "A Writer's Notebook" (1949) and "Points of View" (1958), could infuriate the self-satisfied "priests of the elegant ", boasting of their belonging to the number of the chosen and initiated.

The last lifetime publication of Maugham's work, the autobiographical notes "A Look into the Past", was published in the autumn of 1962 on the pages of the London "Sunday Express".

Somerset Maugham died on December 15, 1965 at the age of 92 in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, near Nice, from pneumonia. According to French law, patients who died in the hospital were supposed to undergo an autopsy, but the writer was taken home, and on December 16 it was officially announced that he had died at home, in his villa, which became his last refuge. The writer does not have a grave as such, since his ashes were scattered under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury. It can be said that this is how he was immortalized, reunited forever with the work of his whole life.

In his best books, which have withstood the test of time and secured his place among the classics of English literature of the 20th century, great problems of a universal human and philosophical plan are posed.

Interesting facts from life

* "I would not go to see my plays at all, neither on the evening of the premiere, nor on any other evening, if I did not consider it necessary to check their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them."
* Maugham wrote several one-act plays and sent them to theaters. Some of them were never returned to him, the rest he, disappointed in them, destroyed himself.
* "Before writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I unconsciously follow this standard of clarity, grace and wit."
* "When the English intelligentsia became interested in Russia, I remembered that Cato began to study Greek at the age of eighty, and took up Russian. But by that time my youthful ardor had diminished in me: I learned to read Chekhov's plays, but I didn’t go further than that, and that little what I knew then is long forgotten.
* Maugham on Russia: "Endless talk where action was required; hesitation; apathy leading directly to disaster; pompous declarations, insincerity and lethargy, which I saw everywhere - all this alienated me from Russia and the Russians."
* There were four plays by Maugham in London at the same time; this made him famous. In "Punch" appeared a cartoon by Bernard Partridge, which depicted Shakespeare, languishing with envy in front of posters with the name of the writer.
* Maugham about the book "The Burden of Human Passions": "My book is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel, where facts are strongly mixed with fiction; I experienced the feelings described in it myself, but not all episodes happened as they are told, and they are partly taken not from my life, but from the lives of people I know well.
* "For my own pleasure, for entertainment and to satisfy what was felt as an organic need, I built my life according to some kind of plan - with a beginning, a middle and an end, just as I built a play, a novel from the people I met here and there or story."

Writer's Awards

* Order of Knights of Honor - 1954

Bibliography

Novels:

* Lisa of Lambeth (1897)
* Mage (1908)
* The burden of human passions (1915)
* Moon and penny (1919)
* Trembling of the Leaf (1921)
* On a Chinese screen (1922)
* Patterned Veil (Painted Veil) (1925)
* Casuarina (1926)
* Ashenden, or The British Agent (1928) Collection of short stories
* Gingerbread and Ale (Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet) (1930)
* Close corner (Small corner) (1932)
* Theater (1937)
* Summing Up (1938)
* Christmas Holidays (1939)
* According to the same recipe (1940)
* At the Villa (Villa on the Hill, At the Top Villa) (1941)
* Razor's Edge (1944)
* Then and Now (1946)
* Toys of Destiny (1947)
* Catalina (1948)
* Mrs Craddock

Plays:

* Man of honor [Decent man] (1898)
* Explorer
* Lady Frederick (1907)
* Jack Straw (Jack Straw) (1908)
* Smith (1909)
* Mrs Dot
* Penelope
* Nobility (1910)
* Bread and Fish (1911)
* Those who are above us (1915)
* Circle (1921)
* Faithful wife (1927)
* Landlords
* Tenth person
* Promised Land
* Sheppey (1933)
* Holy Fire (1933)

Novels:

* Ashenden, or The British Agent (1928)
* In a lion's skin

Novels, stories:

* Drop of native blood
* Force of circumstances
* Going to visit
* spell
* Consul
* Taipan
* Casuarina
* Pacific Ocean
* On a Chinese screen
* backwater
* flutter leaf
* Vessel of Wrath
* Gigolo and Gigolette
* Rain
* Exactly a dozen
* Something human
* Hairless Mexican
* Mr. Harrington's underwear
* God's judgment
* Marriage of convenience
* Appearance and reality
* Tasted nirvana
* Return
* Honolulu
* A note
* Source of inspiration
* The end of the world
* Louise
* Macintosh
* Mr. Know-It-All
* Mayhew
* On the outskirts of the empire
* Unbowed
* Beggar
* Fall of Edward Barnard
* Poet
* Ginger
* Salvatore
* Sanatorium
* Vessel of Wrath
* Dragonfly and Ant
* Ant and Grasshopper
* Bag with books
* Church minister
* The Scarred Man
* Sense of propriety
* Carousel

Essay

* Summing up (1938, Russian translation 1957)
* Writer's Notebook (1949)
* Ten novelists and their novels (1954)
* Points of View (1958)
* A look into the past (1962)

Screen adaptations of works, theatrical performances

* Painted Veil (1934) (2006)
* Theater (1978) (2004)
* At the Villa (2000)
* Change of fate (1987)
* Razor's Edge (1984)
* Night sensation (1983)
* Gigolo and Gigolette (TV) (1980)
* True stories (TV series) (1979-1988)
* The burden of human passions (1934) (1946) (1964)
* Charming Julia (1962)
* The Seventh Sin (1957)
* Miss Sadie Thompson (1953)
* Night theater (TV series) (1950–1959)
* Trio (1950)
* At the edge of the blade (1946)
* Christmas Holidays (1944)
* Moon and Sixpence (1942)
* Letter (1929) (1940)
* Too Many Husbands (1940)
* Vessel of Wrath (1938)
* New Dawn (1937)
* Secret Agent (1936)
* Rain (1932)
* Sadie Thompson (1928)
* East of Suez (1925)

Biography

English writer. Born January 25, 1874 in Paris. His father was a co-owner of a law firm there and a legal attaché at the British Embassy. The mother, a famous beauty, kept a salon that attracted many celebrities from the world of art and politics. At the age of ten, the boy was orphaned, and he was sent to England, to his uncle, the priest. Eighteen-year-old Maugham spent a year in Germany, a few months after returning he entered the medical institute at St. Thomas. In 1897 he received a diploma in medicine and surgery, but never practiced medicine: while still a student, he published his first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897), which absorbed the impressions of student practice in this area of ​​London slums. The book was well received and Maugham decided to become a writer.

For ten years, his success as a prose writer was very modest, but after 1908 he began to gain fame: four of his plays - Jack Straw (Jack Straw, 1908), Smith (Smith, 1909), Nobility (Landed Gentry, 1910), Bread and fish (Loaves and Fishes, 1911) - were staged in London and then in New York. Since the beginning of the First World War, Maugham served in the medical unit. Later he was transferred to the intelligence service, he visited France, Italy, Russia, as well as America and the islands of the South Pacific. The work of a secret agent was vividly reflected in his collection of short stories Ashenden, or the British Agent (Ashenden, or the British Agent, 1928). After the war, Maugham continued to travel extensively. Maugham died in Nice (France) December 16, 1965. A prolific writer, Somerset Maugham created 25 plays, 21 novels and more than 100 short stories, but he was not an innovator in any literary genre.

His acclaimed comedies, such as The Circle (The Circle, 1921), The Constant Wife (1927), do not deviate from the canons of the English "well-made play." In fiction, whether large or small, he strove to present the plot and strongly disapproved of the sociological or any other direction of the novel. Maugham's best novels are the largely autobiographical Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale (1930); exotic The Moon and Sixpence (1919), inspired by fate french artist P. Gauguin; a tale of the South Seas The Narrow Corner (The Narrow Corner, 1932); Razor's Edge (The Razor's Edge, 1944). After 1948, Maugham left dramaturgy and fiction, wrote essays, mainly on literary topics. The swift intrigue, brilliant style and masterful composition of the story brought him the fame of "English Maupassant".

WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUHAM: THE FACETS OF GIVING (G. E. Ionkis, (Maugham W. S. Summing up. - M., 1991. - S. 7-25))

"The greatest advantage of old age is spiritual freedom," Maugham wrote on his seventieth birthday. Fate decreed that he could enjoy this advantage for a long time. Looking back over ninety years of his life, Maugham came to the conclusion that he had always lived in the future. He could not free himself from this habit even when the future took on the outlines of non-existence for him.

The creative longevity of the English writer is impressive: having begun his journey at the time of the growing fame of the late Victorians - T. Hardy, R. Kipling, O. Wilde, he finished it when the "angry" raged and new stars lit up in the literary horizon - W. Golding and A Murdoch, J. Fowles, and M. Spark.

What is striking is not the length of the term allotted to him, but the fact that at every turn of rapidly changing historical time, starting from the 90s of the past and ending with the 50s present century, Maugham the artist remained remarkably modern.

The key to this phenomenon should be sought, first of all, in the fact that in his best works Maugham raised great problems of a general human and general philosophical plan, as well as in his amazing sensitivity to the tragic beginning, so characteristic of the life of the 20th century, to the hidden drama of characters and human relations. It is strange that at the same time he was most often reproached for impassibility, coldness of heart, even cynicism. He, following the idol of his youth, Maupassant, could say: “I am, without a doubt, considered one of the most indifferent people in the world. I am a skeptic, this is not the same thing, a skeptic, because I have good eyes. My eyes say to my heart: hide, old man, you're funny. And my heart hides."

It is difficult to dispel the prevailing misconception, but without abandoning the prejudice, one cannot understand the artist. Maugham was not indifferent to man: neither when he chose medicine as his profession, nor when he abandoned it for the sake of writing. Of all his interests and inclinations, the most enduring was his interest in people. “You can write about a person all your life and still say negligibly little,” Maugham never tired of repeating. Traveling around the world, he was not so much interested in sights as looking out for interesting, original people. “What was good in people made me happy; what was bad in them did not lead to despair,” Maugham admitted. He put his opinion about the human race into the mouth of the hero of one of the stories: "People have the right heart, but the head is no good." Moem is wrong? Object, argue with him. He's honest, and that's what matters.

Now Maugham is recognized in the world as the most widely read English writer after Dickens. However, in the courses of English literature and the solid academic works of his compatriots, Maugham's work is not given the deserved attention. He often implicitly argued with academic literary criticism, and his references to "groups", "cliques", "elites" only strengthened his position as an outsider. In addition, unheard of commercial success has clearly damaged his reputation in the circles of literary scholars of academic orientation. The four million earned by the pen created an invisible wall between him and his fellow craftsmen.

Maugham was painfully worried that the "intelligentsia" (in retaliation he took this word in quotation marks, meaning "highbrow" intellectuals) did not take him seriously. He was annoyed by unfair accusations of pandering to the general public. He did not adapt to anyone, he always had a desire for independence.

At one time, Dreiser promised him a great future. However, the title of the Great Businessman of English Literature was also paid for by creative losses. They were pointed out not only by detractors, but also by loyal admirers like Thomas Wolfe. Maugham himself, in his declining years, had a bitter feeling that the great contemporaries whom he had outlived had passed him by. Not envious of their glory, but jealously looking at other people's achievements, objectively evaluating them, he sometimes became annoyed with himself.

We find curious evidence on this score from Yuri Nagibin, perhaps the only Soviet writer who was fortunate enough to be received at the Morisk villa on the Riviera, where a good half of Maugham's life passed and where he died all alone. "Morisque", where there were celebrities, princes of the blood and prominent political figures (Maugham was friends with Churchill), is part of the legend about the writer. The villa was his fortress, but he hid in it for a short time. Maugham did not belong to the writers who watch life from the window.

Nagibin was not a little struck by the dandyism of the ninety-year old man, but even more by the contrast between bodily frailty and the strength, liveliness of his thought. The Russian guest marveled at the rare combination of calm dignity, childlike excitement, and venomous sarcasm with which Maugham spoke of the writer's affairs that still agitated him. The late Jean Giraudoux was mentioned in the conversation. "I'm mad at him, I can't forgive that he wrote Elektra and not me," said Maugham. Trojan War even better, but I do not envy - I can not write such a thing. (...) And "Electra" I could write, but I wrote it to Giraud, leaving me without best play". This unexpected outburst speaks of high demands on oneself and an understanding of the limits of one's capabilities. One can argue about Maugham's place in literature, one thing is certain: writing was the only activity in which he infinitely and completely believed. Having devoted himself entirely to literature, he became true master.

Maugham consistently and methodically erected the building of his success, guided by a strictly thought-out plan. Easily and freely he passed from one literary kind and genre to another, each striving for perfection. The case is unique, if we recall Shaw's experiments in the field of the novel and just as unsuccessful attempts Flaubert in drama. Twenty novels, about three dozen plays, many collections of stories, travel and autobiographical books, critical essays, articles, prefaces - this is the result of this life.

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 in the family of a successful hereditary lawyer, who at that time served in the English embassy in Paris. An Englishman, born in France, who until the age of ten spoke predominantly French - is this not a paradox? There will be many of them in his life. Maugham graduated from elementary school in France, and classmates will make fun of his English for a long time when he finds himself on the other side of the English Channel. It is not surprising that in England he will never feel quite at home. "I was embarrassed by the English" is the confession of an adult.

Childhood experiences determine a lot in life. The French childhood of Maugham, the youngest in the family, proceeded in an atmosphere of goodwill, affectionate care and tender love emanating from his mother. He was eight years old when she died.

At the age of ten, Maugham lost his father and was placed in the care of an uncle. The fifty-year-old vicar was indifferent to his nephew. In his house, the boy acutely felt loneliness. It did not dissipate primary school at Canterbury, where three bleak years passed, nor at King's School, where he continued his education. Little Maugham stuttered a lot, which was the reason for the endless ridicule of his peers and the deaf irritation of teachers. Over time, the teenager got used to his position, ceased to be burdened by loneliness, even began to look for him. He became addicted to reading, surreptitiously raiding bookcases in the curate's office.

The state of health of the nephew, who grew up as a sickly child, forced the guardian to send Willy first to the south of France, and then to Germany, to Heidelberg. This trip determined a lot in the life and views of the young man. Heidelberg University at that time was a hotbed of culture and free thought. Kuno Fischer inflamed minds with lectures on Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer; Wagner's music shocked, his theory of musical drama opened up unknown distances, Ibsen's plays, translated into German and staged, excited, broke established ideas.

Already at the university, he felt his vocation, but in a respectable family, the position of a professional writer was considered doubtful. His three older brothers were already lawyers. Maugham decides to become a doctor. In the autumn of 1892, the eighteen-year-old boy returned to England and entered the medical school at St. Thomas in Lambeth - poorest area London. Maugham later recalled: "During the years that I studied medicine, I systematically studied English, French, Italian and Latin literature. I read many books on history, something on philosophy and, of course, on natural science and medicine."

The medical practice that began in the third year unexpectedly fascinated him. Three years of hard work in hospital wards helped Maugham to comprehend human nature much deeper than the mountains of books he read - he made an unambiguous conclusion: "I do not know a better school for a writer than the work of a doctor."

In 1897, his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth, was published. The novel told about the world of the London slums, where George Gissing, who knew the life of the bottom from the inside, first looked, the author of the novels Declassed (1884) and Underworld (1889). When Gissing, who was ill with tuberculosis, spoke of a rising literary star, he invariably asked the question: "Did he ever go hungry?" Maugham, having no reason to answer him in the affirmative, seemed to be unable to count on success. Nevertheless, there was success, and criticism immediately ranked the young author as a school of naturalism. But this was only partly true.

Naturalism, as well as aestheticism, opposed to each other artistic movements end of the century, Maugham was not very attracted. True, Wilde admired him, and worship of the "apostle of aestheticism" determined much in Maugham's personal life. As an artist, he was free both from the aesthetic disregard for the prose of life, and from the naturalistic savoring of the dullness of everyday life.

Maugham drew from many sources, being widely read in philosophy, from Plato to modern thinkers - the neo-Hegelian Bradley and the Platonist Whitehead. Maugham's worldview has always been eclectic. It was formed at the time of the wide dissemination of newfangled idealistic concepts - Nietzscheism, Bergsonianism. Maugham treated them, as he did Freudianism, with skepticism, while his "high-browed" contemporaries smoked incense to new idols. Maugham initially trusted the classics more - Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Spinoza. True, he also paid tribute to the time, succumbing in his youth to the pessimistic teachings of Schopenhauer, who represented man as an insignificant grain of sand in the ocean. At the same time, the young Maugham was carried away by the "scientific" nature of his empiricism in the doctrines of the positivists and pragmatic ethics. The "Basic Principles" of Spencer's positivist classic became his reference book for some time. Interest in positivism brought him closer to the school of "new realism". As for artistic landmarks, the beacons of the novice writer were the great French realists XIX century, and the main teacher of Maupassant.

“When I started working on Lisa of Lambeth, I tried to write it in the way that, in my opinion, Maupassant should have done it,” he later admitted. However, the book was born not under the influence of literary images, but from living impressions. Maugham tried to reproduce with maximum accuracy the life and customs of Lambeth, into the ominous nooks and crannies of which not every policeman dared to look; Maugham's black briefcase served as a pass and safe-conduct.

Maugham's novel was preceded by loud scandal, caused by the novel by T. Hardy "Jude the Obscure" (1896). The indignant ardor of critics who accused Hardy of naturalism was thoroughly spent, and Maugham's debut went relatively smoothly. Moreover, the tragic story of the girl, told with harsh truthfulness, without a hint of sentimentality, was a success. And yet, the greatest success awaited the novice writer in another - theatrical field.

In less than ten years, Maugham became a well-known playwright. His first one-act plays were rejected. In 1902, one of them - "Marriages Are Made in Heaven" - was staged in Berlin. In England, it never came to be staged, although Maugham published the play in the small magazine Adventure.

The beginning of a great success was laid by the comedy "Lady Frederic" (1903), which in 1907 was staged by Court-Thietre. During the 1908 season, four of Maugham's plays were running in London. Along with entertaining comedies, Maugham created in the pre-war years sharply critical plays: "The Cream of Society", "Smith", "Promised Land", which raised themes social inequality, hypocrisy and venality of representatives of the highest echelons of power.

Maugham recalls that the reaction to his plays was mixed: "Public newspapers praised the plays for wit, gaiety and stage presence, but scolded for cynicism; more serious critics were merciless to them. They called them cheap, vulgar, told me that I sold my soul Mamone And the intelligentsia, who previously considered me their modest but respected member, not only turned away from me, which would be bad enough, but cast me into the hellish abyss as a new Lucifer.

On the eve of the First World War, his plays were successfully performed both in London theaters and across the ocean.

The war, which split the picture of time in two, also changed the course of Maugham's life. No, front-line everyday life never opened up to him. Unlike fellow young poets and prose writers R. Aldington, R. Graves, Z. Sassoon, he did not visit the line of fire. For a short time he was in the medical battalion, and then joined the British intelligence service. Carrying out her tasks, he worked in Switzerland for a year, and then was sent on a secret mission to Russia. At first, Maugham perceived this kind of activity, like Kipling's Kim, as participation in the "big game", but later, talking about it (collection "Ashenden, or the British Agent", 1928), he will be the first to call espionage not only dirty, but also boring work and dispel the halo of false romance around the activities of the Intelligence Service.

The purpose of his stay in Petrograd, where he arrived in August 1917 via Vladivostok, was to prevent Russia from withdrawing from the war. Meetings with Kerensky deeply disappointed Maugham. The Russian prime minister impressed him as an insignificant and indecisive person. Of all the political figures in Russia with whom he had a chance to talk, he singled out Savinkov as a large, outstanding personality. Having received a secret assignment from Kerensky to Lloyd George, Maugham left for London on October 18, not assuming that exactly in a week the revolution would break out and his mission would lose any meaning. Not in the least regretting his fiasco, later joking about the fate of the failed agent, Maugham was grateful to fate for the "Russian adventure".

Russia has long attracted him as a writer. He discovered Russian literature as a child when he came across Anna Karenina. Re-reading the novel later, he found it full of inexplicable power, but somewhat heavy. "Fathers and Sons" remained misunderstood due to ignorance of the Russian historical situation. In general, Turgenev's novels did not touch him deeply, their idealism seemed sentimental, and the originality of the stylistic manner disappeared during translation. "Crime and Punishment" shocked Maugham, and he greedily pounced on Dostoevsky's novels. He recalled that in comparison with them everything else faded, the greatest Western European novels began to seem artificial, cold, formal. "Insanity" lasted until he discovered Chekhov, who turned out to be deeply kindred to him in spirit. The impression was so deep that he even began to study Russian in order to read Chekhov in the original. "Chekhov will tell you more about Russians than Dostoyevsky," he later wrote.

The years between the two world wars were filled with intense writing and travel (not counting the two years spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium), which gave him inexhaustible material for creativity. He performs in several genres at once: as a novelist, playwright, short story writer, essayist, essayist. His comedies and dramas compete on stage with the plays of B. Shaw.

Maugham had a true "stage instinct". Plays were given to him with surprising ease. They are saturated with winning roles, originally constructed, the dialogue in them is refined and witty.

In the post-war period, Maugham's playwriting undergoes significant changes. Without losing their graceful lightness and dynamism, his comedies become more poignant. The comedy Circle (1921) sharply criticized the immorality of high society. Still paying great attention to the plot, but at the same time abandoning the intricacy of plot moves, Maugham limits the action to the framework of one family. Treason, calculation, hypocrisy, lack of deep feelings and responsibility to children, inability to be happy and give happiness to another - this is what Maugham blames his heroes for, whose life goes like in a bad cycle, where children repeat the sad fate of their parents.

Maugham gravitates more and more towards psychological drama, acting in it not as a skeptical observer, but as an indifferent judge who prefers exposure from within to open invective. One of the first he touched upon the tragedy of the "lost generation" ("Unknown", 1920). The hero of the play is a veteran. The cruelty and senselessness of the war turned him into an apostate. He comes into conflict with the family, the bride, the inhabitants of his native city. The play gradually reveals the criminal union of the sword and the cross.

The atmosphere of the "stormy thirties" - a deep economic crisis, the growing threat of fascism and a new world war - determined the social sound of his latest plays"For Special Merit" (1932) and "Sheppey" (1933). The anti-war play "For Special Merit" is a bitter commentary on the social state that Maugham described as "the chaos of the post-war world."

The feeling of bitter disappointment determines the sound of the morality play "Sheppey". She puzzled critics. The former Maugham was reminiscent only of farcical situations and aphoristic, polished dialogues and monologues. The playwright raised the question of place and responsibility little man in a world of great political and financial passions. He approached the problem in his own way, which worried at that time the great innovator of the stage, B. Brecht. There is in the situation of the play something in common with the plot of "The Good Man from Sesuan", and the use of fantastic grotesque brings them closer.

In the early thirties, Maugham leaves the dramaturgy, he voluntarily leaves the "assembly line of success."

Speaking of his pursuit of perfection, Maugham named two genres in which he hoped to achieve it - the novel and the short story. His literary reputation is based on such novels as The Burden of Human Passions (1915), Moon and Penny (1919), Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Closet (1930). Their film adaptation adds fame to the writer.

At the heart of his novels is a well-built plot, all parts of it are proportionate. Their distinguishing features are brevity (the only exception is "The Burden of Human Passions") and simplicity. They are written without affectation, they do not contain bizarre constructions, fanciful comparisons and epithets. The experience of the playwright allowed him to appreciate the advantages of the rapid development of the plot and make the novel lively and dynamic. This is precisely the secret of the entertaining prose of Maugham.

The autobiographical novel "The Burden of Human Passions" is recognized as the highest achievement of the writer. Written in line with the traditional "novel of education", it is remarkable for its amazing openness, the utmost sincerity in revealing the drama of the soul, and this is its rare strength.

Dreiser was delighted with the novel. He called Maugham "a great artist" and the book "a work of genius", comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. It really feels some kind of gloomy irresistible force. It does not come from the hero, physically rather weak, spiritually naked and vulnerable. It is born from the feeling of the slow cycle of being, the deep flow of life that captivates the hero, what the ancients called fate.

To the best novels of our time, Thomas Wolfe attributed The Burden of Human Passions, believing that "this book was born directly from the inside, from the depths of personal experience." The ability to raise the personal to the universal is the art of a great artist.

The nature of creativity, its secrets relentlessly occupied Maugham. In art, he saw a special world, opposing the bourgeois everyday life and decent vulgarity. He was interested in what is the connection between the morality of the creator and the fruits of his activity, between genius and villainy. In the fact that these are "two things incompatible," as Pushkin believed, Maugham was not completely sure. These problems form the ideological core of his most popular novel, The Moon and the Penny. In the history of Charles Strickland, you can find out the facts of the biography of Gauguin, but this is not a biography of the famous French post-impressionist, but a novel about the tragic fate of a brilliant artist, about the inexplicable secret of his personality. Perhaps the veil of mystery will become a little more transparent, given that Mozm returns the word "genius" to its original meaning - "demon", i.e. divine power, evil or (rarely) beneficent, determining the fate of man.

The writer repeatedly repeated that the significance artwork depends on the scale of the personality of its creator. "The greater his talent, the brighter his individuality, the more fantastic the picture of life he paints." The artist's personality is realized in his art, and it is by him that one can judge it.

The further development of Maugham as a novelist is increasingly connected with the understanding of ethical problems. In the novel The Patterned Cover (1925), he speaks of the indispensable unity of Good and Beauty.

The heroine of the novel, the wife of a modest talented bacteriologist, finds herself with him in a Chinese town lost in the jungle, receives from the French nuns who nurse sick Chinese children, and to a certain extent from her husband, who saved others and died from cholera, a lesson in a well-lived life. At a high price, she is given the realization of the futility of her own life line. The science of compassion and mercy is not easy, but only it leads the heroine to liberation from the "burden of human passions", to moral purification and rebirth.

In the novel "Pies and Beer, or the Skeleton in the Cupboard" Maugham's talent was revealed from an unexpected side: the tragic beginning gave way to the comic, and the satirical line was intricately intertwined with the lyrical. This is a novel about the manners of literary London at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. In it, Maugham revealed the secrets of literary cuisine, ways to attract reader attention, ridiculed the technology of creating exaggerated reputations. Fellow writers were shocked by the frankness of his revelations. For several months in the literary circles of London, nothing but talk about this book. Elroy Cyrus was easily recognized as a poisonous portrait of the then popular novelist, Maugham's friend Hugh Walpole. The prototype was beside himself with rage. But it was not this fact that revolted the literary world. At that time, critics and settling scores were accustomed to this form of controversy. The scandals caused by Aldington's "Death of a Hero", "Yellow Chrome" (1922) and "Counterpoint" (1928) by O. Huxley have not yet been forgotten, in the parodic images of which both T. S. Eliot and D. G. Lawrence recognized themselves, and Ezra Pound, and G. Wells, and N. Douglas. But Maugham encroached on the holy of holies: in Driffield they saw a resemblance to the recently deceased Thomas Hardy. Accusations poured in from all sides. Maugham categorically denied malicious intent: "Hurdy was no more implied by me than George Meredith or Anatole France." Obviously, the pompous funeral of the "last Victorian" suggested to Maugham the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe novel, but it was not his intention to disturb the shadow of the patriarch of literature.

Maugham loved this novel more than others, because it is autobiographical, but unlike The Burden of Human Passions, it is filled not with bitterness, but with light sadness. The book turned out to be mischievous and prickly.

The ironic beginning, so characteristic of "Pies and Beer", is enhanced in the novel "Theatre" (1937). At the center of the novel is the career story of the great actress Julia Lambert. Over the thirty years given to the drama, Maugham has known many outstanding theater and film actresses. Beth Davis, Corinna Griffiths, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Gladys Cooper played in films based on his novels. Julia Lambert collective image.

During Maugham's time theater circles the debate continued, which was initiated by Diderot's treatise "The Paradox of the Actor": sensitivity, emotionality, or a cold mind makes an actor great, should an actor be a major individual or a blind executor of the director's will? A supporter of Diderot, Maugham believed that only a rational, observant, outwardly directed actor is able to absorb, evaluate and recreate reality into art. However, he did not deny the personal beginning. He believed that the passions that the actor does not experience himself, but observes from the outside, speculatively remain not comprehended by him to the end and in all depth.

Maugham the artist admires the great art of his heroine, but he does not hide the fact that she continues to play outside the stage, changing masks, actively participating in the creation of the myth of the incomparable Julia Lambert. He exposes the underside of the myth, the mechanism of its creation, and the very craft of the actor appears as hard work, multiplied by talent, it loses its romantic halo.

Maugham is highly characterized by Shakespeare's perception of the world as a gigantic theater. His novel tells not only about acting as a great art, but also about the hypocrisy that modern relations of mother and son, husband and wife are filled with, about a farce in which the pillars of society, representatives intellectual elite, powers of the world this. Everyone plays their own game. Maugham looks at her not from the stalls, but from behind the scenes. The shift of the angle destroys the illusion, the motives hidden from the eyes, guiding the actions of the characters, are exposed.

Maugham seriously turned to the genre of the story, being already a well-known playwright and novelist.

His first collection, The Trembling of the Leaf, appeared in 1921, at a time when the genre of the story gained popularity. In England, the story made itself known rather late, but the reader immediately fell in love with it. These were the works of Kipling, Conan Doyle and Wells in the first place. In the 1920s, C. Mansfield and A. Coppard were professional storytellers. D. G. Lawrence, R. Aldington, O. Huxley showed interest in the story. The best novelists of that time were influenced by Chekhov. Highly appreciating his psychologism and ability to convey the atmosphere, Maugham gravitated more towards the Maupassant school. "I wanted to build my stories firmly, on one continuous line from the exposition to the end ... I was not afraid of what is commonly called a" highlight "... I preferred to end my stories not with dots, but with a period." This confession of Maugham sheds light on the poetics of his stories. True, over time, he turned to the lessons of Chekhov. Combining action with subtle psychologism, he reached significant heights. For fifty years, Maugham wrote over a hundred stories, which amounted to seven collections. Among them there are real masterpieces: "Rain", "Hairless Mexican", "Unbowed".

Maugham writes mostly about ordinary people, but extraordinary things happen to them. He widely uses the element of the unexpected, which helps to reveal the precariousness, relativity of socio-political values, psychological attitudes, moral guidelines"decent" man of the "middle class".

An example of this is the story "Rain", which has become a textbook, in which he exposes religious hypocrisy and spiritual emptiness hiding behind it.

During his long life, Maugham observed many grimaces of chance and ridicule of fate, and he told about them in his stories. He did not invent plots, he spied them from life. Maugham's strength is in understanding the complexity of a person, leading to the unpredictability of his actions, in the depth of understanding the dialectics of the soul.

The fragmentary impressions inevitable in short stories are compensated in Maugham by the unity of his view of the world. The impression from his best stories is such that the space remaining outside the boundaries of the plot looks illuminated. The general in his short stories peeps through the particular.

Maugham's stories are entertainingly and vividly written, dramatic, and often end with surprise endings. Simple in form, extremely compressed, devoid of pretensions to formal novelty, they conceal a strange charm, giving birth to a "harmony of authenticity". Maugham is classical, his stories are characterized by completeness of form, his speech flows without fuss, and his novelty is rather in the point of view from which his characters are revealed to him, "in that lyrical meditation, in that loneliness of the author's "I", which partly makes him related to ours. Chekhov".

Maugham was an artist who subtly felt the relevance of this or that genre to the requirements of the moment, and this is also one of the reasons for his modernity. Feeling the emerging trend of fusion of literature and philosophy, anticipating the current "boom" of documentary, memoir, biographical prose, he created excellent travel essays "The Gentleman in the Drawing Room" (1930), "Don Fernando: Several Variations on a Spanish Theme" (1935) and the most " personal" book "Summing up" (1938).

Richard Aldington and Graham Greene admired the lively prose of Don Fernando, full of intellectual brilliance, that genuine love for Spain that the pages of the book breathe, the depth of penetration into the history, culture, life and the very national character of the Spaniards.

Maugham's travel books are not only skillful sketches, they attract not so much information about unfamiliar places as the opportunity to communicate with an experienced traveler, a witty interlocutor, a brilliant storyteller, listen interesting stories and funny anecdotes, ponder over riddles human nature, to reflect on the secrets of creativity, because no matter what Maugham wrote in his essays, he invariably returned to literature - the main business of his life.

The Second World War found Maugham in France. On instructions from the British Ministry of Information, he studies the mood of the French, spends more than a month on the Maginot Line, and visits warships in Toulon. Confidence that "France will do its duty" and will fight to the end breathes his reports, which formed the book "France at War" (1940). Three months after its release, France fell, and Maugham, having heard that the Nazis had blacklisted his name, hardly gets to England on a coal barge, and later leaves for the USA, where he lives until the end of the war.

Having made a mistake in his prediction about the ability of France to repulse Hitler, Maugham compensates for it with a sharp analysis of the situation that led to the defeat (the book "Very Personal", 1941). He writes that the government of France, the prosperous bourgeoisie and aristocracy that stood behind it, and wealthy circles in general, were more afraid of Russian Bolshevism than of the German invasion. Tanks were kept not on the Maginot Line, but in the rear - in case of a rebellion by their own workers. Corruption corroded society, the spirit of decay took possession of the army.

Maugham was sure that the French, brave and proud people liberate the motherland from slavery. Serious lesson he learned from tragic history defeat of France: "If a nation values ​​something more than freedom, it will lose freedom, and the irony is that if this something is comfort or money, it will lose them too. A nation fighting for freedom can defend it if it has such values like honesty, courage, fidelity, foresight and self-sacrifice. Not owning them, she can only blame herself if she loses her freedom. " The further course of the world war and defeat Nazi Germany it showed the validity of Maugham's conclusions.

Returning to the Riviera after the war, he found his house devastated. The ancient Moorish sign, believed to protect from adversity, imprinted on the wall at the entrance to the villa and placed on the covers of his books, turned out to be powerless against modern vandalism. But the main thing is that fascism hated by Maugham was defeated, and life went on.

The post-war decade was fruitful for the writer. Maugham addresses the genre for the first time historical novel. In the books Then and Now (1946) and Catalina (1948), the past is read as a lesson for the present. Maugham reflects in them about power and its impact on a person, about the policy of rulers, about noble patriotism. These last novels are written in a new way for him, they are deeply tragic.

Maugham's last significant novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), proved to be the final one in every way. His idea was hatched for a long time. The plot was summarized in the story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" (1921). When asked how long he had been writing the book, Maugham replied: "All my life." This is the result of his reflections on the meaning of life. This is an attempt to create an image "positively beautiful person"(Dostoevsky's expression). It becomes Larry Darrell, a young American, passed the test the first world war. He refuses to return to his usual course and live "like everyone else", i.e. seize your chance in the post-war period of universal prosperity. The "great American dream" does not attract him, he is indifferent to the prospects of enrichment and this sharply stands out among his compatriots. Front-line experience prompts him to look for other values. For a long time, we had an idea of ​​​​Maugham as an apolitical, almost asocial writer. Meanwhile, Maugham was very sensitive to social processes, and "The Razor's Edge" is another clear evidence of this.

At one time, he was the first to grope for the theme of the "lost generation". Now, in a novel that ends on the eve of World War II, he pointed to the trends that would define the life of the "broken generation" of the 1950s and 1960s ("beatism", "hippies", appeal to Eastern cults and systems).

Having reached an age when the need to be critical of the environment begins to prevail, Maugham devotes himself entirely to essayism. In 1948, his book "Great Writers and Their Novels" was published, the heroes of which were Fielding and Jane Austen, Stendhal and Balzac, Dickens and Emily Bronte, Melville and Flaubert, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who accompanied Maugham for a long life.

Among the six essays that formed the collection "Changing Moods" (1952), attention is drawn to the memories of novelists whom he knew well - about G. James, G. Wells and A. Bennett, and the article "The Decline and Destruction of the Detective" written with skill. ".

Maugham's last book Points of View (1958) includes big essay about a short story, the recognized master of which he became in the pre-war years.

Throughout his long life, Maugham expounded his views on the problems of creativity, questions of writing, on understanding the tasks of literature.

Maugham has his own concept of the novel, short stories, his own view of the theater and its tasks, his own judgments about the skill of the playwright and the role of the artist, most interesting statements about art - all this is scattered in his numerous essays, critical and essay prose, articles, prefaces, notes.

His criticism is sometimes subjective, but this is compensated by impeccable taste, deep mind, subtle irony, breadth of approach. Maugham is true to himself: he is fascinating in all genres.

In his later years, Maugham came to the conclusion that a writer is something more than a storyteller. There was a time when he liked to repeat, following Wilde, that the purpose of art is to give pleasure, that entertainment is an indispensable and main condition for success. Now he clarifies that by entertaining he does not mean that which amuses, but that which arouses interest. "The more intellectual amusement a novel offers, the better it is."

Literature should not teach, but should contribute to the growth of moral criteria. Unlike Wilde, he perceives art and ethics in their unity. “Aesthetic experience is of value only if it affects the nature of a person and thus evokes in him an active attitude towards life” - this is an entry made in his diary in 1933. Later he returns to this thought and deepens it, arguing , What " pure art It does not exist that the slogan "art for art's sake" is meaningless.

Maugham is convinced that the author offers his own criticism of reality already by what events, what characters he chooses, and also through his attitude towards them. Perhaps this criticism is not original and not very deep, but it exists, and because of this, the writer is a moralist, albeit a very modest one. Maugham always believed that the preaching of an artist is most effective if he does not suspect that he is preaching.

Repeating more than once that the art of writing "is not a sacrament, but a craft, like any other," Maugham thought a lot about how a semblance of life is created in the story. Literature and life are inseparable concepts for him. The writer's subject is life in all its manifestations, but where does the novelist get that living tissue that serves as his material? A. Bennett believed that "he cuts it off from himself." Maugham also believed that the nature of fiction is necessarily autobiographical. Everything that the writer creates "is an expression of his personality, a manifestation of his innate instincts, his feelings and experience." A decisive role in the selection of material is played by the personality of the author. It is her invisible imprint on every page, for great writer has its own unique vision of the world. The brighter and richer the individuality of the author, the more chances he has to give the characters the illusion of originality.

“Success, as experience tells me,” Maugham writes, “is possible in only one way, “by telling the truth, as you understand it, about what you know for sure ... Imagination will help the writer to assemble an important or beautiful pattern from disparate facts. it will help to see the whole behind the particular ... However, if the writer incorrectly sees the essence of things, then the imagination will only aggravate his mistakes, and he can truly see only what he knows from personal experience.

Maugham's reflections on the writer's mission in modern world and to this day have not lost their relevance. “Now everyone knows,” he writes at the very beginning of the Second World War, “that the world is in a terrible state, freedom is dead or agonizing, everywhere you look, poverty, shameless exploitation of man by man, cruelty, injustice. Grounds for anger and pity enough, the trouble is that these feelings are meaningless if they do not lead to certain efforts.They are immoral if, pleased with yourself and your generous emotions, you do not try to change the conditions that gave rise to them ... The writer's business is not to regret and not to be angry but to understand."

A writer cannot be impartial. "His goal is not to copy life, but to dramatize it." He is ready to respect the naturalist artist for depicting life with fearless directness, for the absence of sweet syrup and cheap optimism in his works, but he refuses to consider verisimilitude the main virtue of art. This idea matured gradually. In the novel The Burden of Human Passions, the hero - the author's alter ego - finds himself in Spain and "discovers" El Greco. The paintings of this enigmatic master are stunning and convince of the existence of a very special realism: everything in them contradicts the plausibility and at the same time they feel a much greater truth of life than that reached by the masters who worked in the traditional manner.

Creating his characters, the writer captures hardly emerging trends in modern times, anticipates life. The ability to create reality, not just to copy, but to create your own world, distinguishes an artisan from a Master.

Honesty, tolerance, common sense, independence, wide education, the deepest knowledge of human nature and writing, high artistic skill, the ability to involve the reader in a conversation, allowing him to feel with him, the Master, on an equal footing - this is what makes Maugham the critic a desirable interlocutor.

And another lesson of his "practical aesthetics" is instructive: openness to others national cultures. Today, more than ever, we need an example of the perception of art and the Beautiful as a common human heritage.

"It doesn't matter who carved the statue - an ancient Greek or a modern Frenchman. The only important thing is that it now causes aesthetic excitement in us and that this aesthetic excitement pushes us to action."

Maugham considered his reasoning to be nothing more than an opinion, a personal point of view. And yet today they are perceived not only as evidence of a bygone literary era to which he belonged, but also as a key to understanding contemporary phenomena reality and literature.

Literature

1. Quotations are taken from Maugham's works included in this collection, so the sources of citation are not indicated further.
2. Nagibin Yu. Unwritten story by Somerset Maugham // Get up and go: Stories and stories. M., 1989. S. 654.
3. It is not known how many plays Maugham wrote in total. Some of them were preserved in manuscripts, the rest, shortly before his death, the writer destroyed along with for the most part your archive.
4. Shaginyan M. Foreign letters. M., 1964. S. 213.
5. In 1954, the book was published in a revised form under the title "Ten novels and their creators."

Biography (E. A. Guseva.)

Maugham William Somerset (January 25, 1874, Paris, December 16, 1965, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France), English writer. Born in the family of a lawyer of the British Embassy in France. Received a medical education; practice in a poor quarter of London provided material for M.'s first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897). Member of the 1st World War 1914?18; agent of British intelligence, including in Russia (collection of short stories "Ashenden, or the British agent", 1928). The first success brought M. plays: "Lady Frederick" (post. 1907), later? "Circle" (1921), "Sheppey" (1933). In the novels The Moon and the Grosh (1919, Russian translation, 1927, 1960) and Gingerbread and Ale (1930), M.'s rejection of religious hypocrisy and ugly petty-bourgeois morals was expressed. Attempts to free themselves from the lowlands of bourgeois norms of life are shown in the novel The Razor's Edge (1944). The most famous in many respects is the autobiographical novel of education The Burden of Human Passions (1915; Russian translation, 1959); subtle psychologism in the depiction of the moral quest of the hero is combined with the breadth of the depicted picture of the world. Creativity M. developed in line with critical realism, sometimes with elements of naturalism. M.'s works are always action-packed. M.'s notebooks, prefaces to his own and other people's books, and especially the book "Summing up" (1938, Russian translation 1957) are full of interesting observations on the creative process, contain a number of insightful literary assessments and self-assessments.

Op.:

* The collected edition of the works, v. 1?21, L., 1934?59;
* A writer "s notebook, L., 1949; Points of view, Garden City (N. Y.), 1959; in Russian translation? Rain, M., 1961;
* Notes on creativity, "Questions of Literature", 1966, No. 4; Theatre, on Sat:
* Modern English short story, M., 1969.

Lit.:

* Kanin G., Remembering Mr., Maugham, N. Y., ;
* Brown I., W. S. Maugham, L., 1970;
* Calder R. L., W. S. Maugham and the quest for freedom, L., 1972.

Biography (en.wikipedia.org)

Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris, the son of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France. Parents specially prepared the birth on the territory of the embassy so that the child has legal grounds to say that he was born in the UK:

A law was expected to be passed under which all children born on French territory automatically became French citizens and, thus, upon reaching the age of majority, were to be sent to the front in case of war.

As a child, Maugham spoke only French, mastering English only after he was orphaned at the age of 11 (his mother died of consumption in February 1882, his father died of stomach cancer in June 1884) and was sent to relatives in English city Whitstable in Kent, six miles from Canterbury. Upon arrival in England, Maugham began to stutter - this remained for life.

Since William was brought up in the family of Henry Maugham, vicar in Whitstable, he began his studies at the Royal School in Canterbury. Then he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg - in Heidelberg Maugham wrote his first work - a biography of the German composer Meerber (when it was rejected by the publisher, Maugham burned the manuscript). Then he entered the medical school (1892) at the hospital of St. Thomas in London - this experience is reflected in Maugham's first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897). The first success in the field of literature Maugham brought the play "Lady Frederick" (1907). During World War I, he collaborated with MI5, and was sent to Russia as a British intelligence agent. The work of the intelligence officer was reflected in the collection of short stories Eshenden, or the British Agent (1928, Russian translation 1992).

In May 1917, Maugham married Siri Wellcome.

After the war, Maugham continued his successful career as a playwright, writing the plays The Circle (1921) and Sheppey (1933). Maugham's novels were also successful - "The Burden of Human Passions" (1915; Russian translation 1959) - almost an autobiographical novel, "The Moon and a Penny" (1919, Russian translation 1927, 1960), "Pies and Beer" (1930) , "Razor's Edge" (1944).

In July 1919, Maugham traveled to China in pursuit of new experiences, and later to Malaysia, which gave him material for two collections of short stories.

Maugham died on December 15, 1965 in a hospital in Nice from pneumonia. But since, according to French law, patients who died in the hospital were supposed to be autopsied, he was taken home and only on December 16 was it reported that Somerset Maugham died at home, at the Villa Moresque, in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat near Nice .

On December 22, his ashes were buried under the wall of the Maugham Library at the Royal School, Canterbury.

Bibliography

Prose

* "Liza of Lambeth" (Liza of Lambeth, 1897)
* The Making of a Saint (1898)
* Orientations (1899)
* The Hero (1901)
* Mrs Craddock (1902)
* The Merry-go-round (1904)
* The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia (1905)
* The Bishop's Apron (1906)
* The Explorer (1908)
* "The Magician" (The Magician, 1908)
* "The burden of human passions" (Of Human Bondage, 1915; Russian translation 1959)
* The Moon and Sixpence (1919, Russian translation 1927, 1960)
* The Trembling of a Leaf, 1921
* "On a Chinese Screen" (On A Chinese Screen, 1922)
* "Patterned Veil" / "Painted Veil" (The Painted Veil, 1925)
* "Casuarina" (The Casuarina Tree, 1926)
* The Letter (Stories of Crime) (1930)
* "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (Ashenden, or the British Agent, 1928). Novels
* The Gentleman In The Parlour: A Record of a Journey From Rangoon to Haiphong (1930)
* Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard, 1930
* The Book Bag (1932)
* "Narrow Corner" (The Narrow Corner, 1932)
* Ah King (1933)
* The Judgment Seat (1934)
*Don Fernando (1935)
* Cosmopolitans - Very Short Stories (1936)
* My South Sea Island (1936)
* "Theater" (Theatre, 1937)
* "Summing Up" (The Summing Up, 1938, Russian translation 1957)
* "Christmas Holidays", (Christmas Holiday, 1939)
*Princess September and The Nightingale (1939)
*France At War (1940)
* Books and You (1940)
* "According to the same recipe" (The Mixture As Before, 1940)
* "At the Villa" (Up at the Villa, 1941)
* Strictly Personal (1941)
* The Hour Before Dawn (1942)
* The Unconquered (1944)
* "Razor's Edge" (The Razor's Edge, 1944)
* “Then and now. A novel about Niccolò Machiavelli (Then and Now, 1946)
* Of Human Bondage - An Address (1946)
* "Toys of fate" (Creatures of Circumstance, 1947)
* "Catalina" (Catalina, 1948)
*Quartet (1948)
* Great Novels and Their Novels (1948)
* A Writer's Notebook (1949)
* Trio (1950)
* The Writer's Point of View" (1951)
* Encore (1952)
* The Vagrant Mood (1952)
* The Noble Spaniard (1953)
* Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954)
* "Point of View" (Points of View, 1958)
* Purely For My Pleasure (1962)

Plays

*A Man of Honor
* "Lady Frederick" (Lady Frederick, post. 1907)
* "Jack Straw" / "Jack Straw" (Jack Straw, 1908)
* "Mrs. Dot"
* "Penelope"
* The Explorer
* The Tenth Man
* "Nobility" (Landed Gentry, 1910)
* "Smith" (Smith, 1909)
* The Land of Promise
* The Unknown
* "Circle" (The Circle, 1921)
* Caesar's Wife
* East of Suez
*Our Betters
*Home and Beauty
* The Unattainable
* Loaves and Fishes (1911)
* "The Faithful Wife" (The Constant Wife, 1927)
* The letter
* The Sacred Flame
* The Bread Winner
* For Services Rendered
* "Sheppey" (1933)

Screen adaptations

* 1925 - "East of Suez" / East of Suez
* 1928 - Sadie Thompson
* 1929 - The Letter
* 1932 - Rain
* 1934 - "The burden of human passions" / Of Human Bondage (with Bette Davis)
* 1934 - "The Painted Veil" / The Painted Veil (with Greta Garbo)
* 1938 - The Vessel of Wrath
* 1940 - The Letter
* 1942 - "Moon and penny" / The Moon and Sixpence
* 1946 - "Razor's Edge" / The Razor's Edge
* 1946 - "The burden of human passions" / Of Human Bondage
* 1948 - Quartet
* 1950 - Trio
* 1952 - Encore
* 1953 - Miss Sadie Thompson
* 1957 - The Seventh Sin
* 1958 - The Beachcomber
* 1962 - Julia, du bist zauberhaft
* 1964 - "The burden of human passions" / Of Human Bondage
* 1969 - The Letter
* 1978 - "Theater" (with Vija Artmane and Ivar Kalninsh)
* 1982 - The Letter
* 1984 - "Razor's Edge" / The Razor's Edge (with Bill Murray)
* 2000 - Up at the Villa
* 2004 - "Theatre" / Being Julia (with Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons)
* 2006 - "The Painted Veil" / The Painted Veil (with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts)

Interesting Facts

* During the First World War, he collaborated with MI5, as an agent of British intelligence was sent to Russia.
* ...Because of vertically challenged(152 cm) Maugham was declared unfit for military service and he did not get to the fronts of the First World War. He got a job as a driver in the Red Cross. In 1915, an officer from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) drew the attention of him and recruited him as a secret agent.
* Maugham's candidacy was the best fit for work outside of Foggy Albion. Firstly, having lived for several years in France and Germany, he was fluent in German and French. Secondly, he had a real cover - literary activity.
* Maugham was in Switzerland for almost a year, where he monitored people suspected of spying for Germany. Maintained contacts with representatives of various Allied intelligence services. He regularly sent detailed reports to the SIS and at the same time worked on plays.

William Somerset Maugham (eng. William Somerset Maugham, born January 25, 1874, Paris - December 16, 1965, Nice) - British writer, one of the most successful prose writers of the 1930s, author of 78 books, British intelligence agent.

Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris, the son of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France. Parents specially prepared the birth on the territory of the embassy so that the child had legal grounds to say that he was born in the territory of the UK: a law was expected to be passed according to which all children born in French territory automatically became French citizens and, thus, upon reaching the age of majority, were subject to be sent to front in case of war.

His grandfather, Robert Maugham, was at one time a well-known lawyer, one of the co-organizers of the English Law Society. Both grandfather and father of William Maugham predicted their fate as a lawyer.

And although William Maugham himself did not become a lawyer, his older brother Frederick, later Viscount Maugham, was pleased with his legal career and served as Lord Chancellor (1938-1939).

As a child, Maugham spoke only French, mastering English only after he was orphaned at the age of 10 (his mother died of consumption in February 1882, his father (Robert Ormond Maugham) died of stomach cancer in June 1884) and was sent to relatives in the English city of Whitstable in Kent, six miles from Canterbury.

Upon arrival in England, Maugham began to stutter - this remained for life. “I was small in stature; hardy, but not strong physically; I stuttered, was shy and in poor health. I had no inclination for the sport which occupies such an important place in the life of the English; and - either for one of these reasons, or from birth - I instinctively shunned people, which prevented me from getting along with them, ”he said.

Since William was brought up in the family of Henry Maugham, vicar in Whitstable, he began his studies at the Royal School in Canterbury. Then he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg - in Heidelberg Maugham wrote his first work - a biography of the composer Meyerbeer (when it was rejected by the publisher, Maugham burned the manuscript). Then he entered the medical school (1892) at the hospital of St. Thomas in London - this experience is reflected in Maugham's first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897).

The first success in the field of literature Maugham brought the play "Lady Frederick" (1907). During the First World War, he collaborated with MI5, as an agent of British intelligence was sent to Russia in order to prevent her from leaving the war. Arrived there by boat from the USA, to Vladivostok. Was in Petrograd from August to November 1917, repeatedly met with Alexander Kerensky, Boris Savinkov and others politicians.

He left Russia because of the failure of his mission (October Revolution) through Sweden. The work of the intelligence officer was reflected in the collection of 14 short stories "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (1928, Russian translations - 1929 and 1992). After the war, Maugham continued his successful career as a playwright, writing the plays The Circle (1921) and Sheppey (1933). Maugham's novels were also successful - "The Burden of Human Passions" (19159) - almost an autobiographical novel, "The Moon and a Penny", "Pies and Beer" (1930), "Theatre" (1937), "The Razor's Edge" (1944).

In July 1919, Maugham traveled to China in pursuit of new experiences, and later to Malaysia, which gave him material for two collections of short stories. The villa at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera was bought by Maugham in 1928 and became one of the great literary and social salons and the writer's home for the rest of his life. Winston Churchill, Herbert Wells sometimes visited the writer, sometimes Soviet writers were also here.

His work continued to be replenished with plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books.

By 1940, Somerset Maugham had already become one of the most famous and wealthy writers of English fiction. Maugham did not hide the fact that he writes "not for the sake of money, but in order to get rid of the ideas, characters, types that haunt his imagination, but, at the same time, does not mind at all if creativity provides him, among other things, with the opportunity to write what he wants and be his own master.” In 1944, Maugham's novel "The Razor's Edge" was published.

For most of World War II, Maugham, now in his sixties, was in the United States, first in Hollywood, where he worked extensively on scripts, making adjustments to them, and later in the South.

In 1947, the writer approved the Somerset Maugham Prize, which was awarded to the best English writers under the age of thirty-five.

Maugham gave up traveling when he felt that they could give him nothing more. “There was nowhere else for me to change. The arrogance of culture flew off me. I accepted the world as it is. I have learned tolerance. I wanted freedom for myself and was ready to give it to others.

After 1948, Maugham left dramaturgy and fiction, writing essays, mainly on literary topics. Maugham's last lifetime publication, the autobiographical notes A Look into the Past, was published in the fall of 1962 on the pages of the London Sunday Express.

Somerset Maugham died on December 15, 1965 at the age of 92 in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, near Nice, from pneumonia. According to French law, patients who died in the hospital were supposed to undergo an autopsy, but the writer was taken home, and on December 16 it was officially announced that he had died at home, in his villa, which became his last refuge. The writer does not have a grave as such, since his ashes were scattered under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury.

Personal life of Somerset Maugham: Without repressing his bisexuality, in May 1917 Maugham married the decorator Siri Wellcome, with whom they had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Maugham. The marriage was not successful, in 1929 the couple divorced.

Somerset admitted in his old age: "My biggest mistake was that I imagined myself to be three-quarters normal and only a quarter homosexual, when in reality it was the other way around."

Interesting facts about Somerset Maugham: Maugham always put a desk against a blank wall so that nothing distracts from work. He worked three or four hours in the morning, fulfilling the self-imposed norm of 1000-1500 words.

Dying, he said: “Dying is a boring and bleak business. My advice to you is never do this. “Before writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I unconsciously equal myself with this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”

Maugham about the book “The Burden of Human Passions”: “My book is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel, where facts are strongly mixed with fiction; I experienced the feelings described in it myself, but not all the episodes happened the way they are described, and they are partly taken not from my life, but from the life of people I know well. “I wouldn’t go to see my plays at all, neither on the evening of the premiere, nor on any other evening, if I didn’t consider it necessary to check their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them”

Novels by Somerset Maugham: Liza of Lambeth

"The Making of a Saint"

"Hero" (The Hero) "Mrs. Craddock" (Mrs Craddock)

"Carousel" (The Merry-go-round)

The Bishop's Apron

"Conqueror of Africa" ​​(The Explorer)

"The Magician" "Of Human Bondage"

"Moon and penny" (The Moon and Sixpence)

"Patterned Veil" (The Painted Veil) "Pies and beer, or the Skeleton in the closet" /

"Solid Charms" (Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard)

"Small Corner" (The Narrow Corner)

"Theater" (Theater) "Christmas holidays", (Christmas Holiday)

"Villa on the Hill" (Up at the Villa)

"One Hour Before Dawn" The Hour Before Dawn)

The Razor's Edge

“Then and now. A novel about Niccolò Machiavelli" (Then and Now)

"Catalina" (Catalina, 1948; Russian translation 1988 - A. Afinogenova)

William Somerset Maugham (eng. William Somerset Maugham, born January 25, 1874, Paris - December 16, 1965, Nice) - British writer, one of the most successful prose writers of the 1930s, author of 78 books, British intelligence agent.

Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris, the son of a lawyer at the British Embassy in France.

Parents specially prepared the birth on the territory of the embassy so that the child had legal grounds to say that he was born in the territory of the UK: a law was expected to be passed according to which all children born in French territory automatically became French citizens and, thus, upon reaching the age of majority, were subject to be sent to front in case of war.

His grandfather, Robert Maugham, was at one time a well-known lawyer, one of the co-organizers of the English Law Society. Both grandfather and father of William Maugham predicted their fate as a lawyer. And although William Maugham himself did not become a lawyer, his older brother Frederick, later Viscount Maugham, was pleased with his legal career and served as Lord Chancellor (1938-1939).

As a child, Maugham spoke only French, mastering English only after he was orphaned at the age of 10 (his mother died of consumption in February 1882, his father (Robert Ormond Maugham) died of stomach cancer in June 1884) and was sent to relatives in the English city of Whitstable in Kent, six miles from Canterbury.

Upon arrival in England, Maugham began to stutter - this remained for life.

“I was small in stature; hardy, but not strong physically; I stuttered, was shy and in poor health. I had no inclination for the sport which occupies such an important place in the life of the English; and - either for one of these reasons, or from birth - I instinctively shunned people, which prevented me from getting along with them, ”he said.

Since William was brought up in the family of Henry Maugham, vicar in Whitstable, he began his studies at the Royal School in Canterbury. Then he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg - in Heidelberg Maugham wrote his first work - a biography of the composer Meyerbeer (when it was rejected by the publisher, Maugham burned the manuscript).

Then he entered the medical school (1892) at the hospital of St. Thomas in London - this experience is reflected in Maugham's first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897). The first success in the field of literature Maugham brought the play "Lady Frederick" (1907).

During the First World War, he collaborated with MI5, as an agent of British intelligence was sent to Russia in order to prevent her from leaving the war. Arrived there by boat from the USA, to Vladivostok. He was in Petrograd from August to November 1917, met repeatedly with Alexander Kerensky, Boris Savinkov and other political figures. He left Russia because of the failure of his mission (October Revolution) through Sweden.

The work of the intelligence officer was reflected in the collection of 14 short stories "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (1928, Russian translations - 1929 and 1992).

After the war, Maugham continued his successful career as a playwright, writing the plays The Circle (1921) and Sheppey (1933). Maugham's novels were also successful - "The Burden of Human Passions" (19159) - almost an autobiographical novel, "The Moon and a Penny", "Pies and Beer" (1930), "Theatre" (1937), "The Razor's Edge" (1944).

In July 1919, Maugham traveled to China in pursuit of new experiences, and later to Malaysia, which gave him material for two collections of short stories.

The villa at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera was bought by Maugham in 1928 and became one of the great literary and social salons and the writer's home for the rest of his life. Winston Churchill sometimes visited the writer, occasionally there were also Soviet writers. His work continued to be replenished with plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books.

By 1940, Somerset Maugham had already become one of the most famous and wealthy writers of English fiction. Maugham did not hide the fact that he writes "not for the sake of money, but in order to get rid of the ideas, characters, types that haunt his imagination, but, at the same time, does not mind at all if creativity provides him, among other things, with the opportunity to write what he wants and be his own master.”

In 1944, Maugham's novel "The Razor's Edge" was published. For most of World War II, Maugham, now in his sixties, was in the United States, first in Hollywood, where he worked extensively on scripts, making adjustments to them, and later in the South.

In 1947, the writer approved the Somerset Maugham Prize, which was awarded to the best English writers under the age of thirty-five.

Maugham gave up traveling when he felt that they could give him nothing more. “There was nowhere else for me to change. The arrogance of culture flew off me. I accepted the world as it is. I have learned tolerance. I wanted freedom for myself and was ready to give it to others. After 1948, Maugham left dramaturgy and fiction, writing essays, mainly on literary topics.

Maugham's last lifetime publication, the autobiographical notes A Look into the Past, was published in the fall of 1962 on the pages of the London Sunday Express.

Somerset Maugham died on December 15, 1965 at the age of 92 in the French town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, near Nice, from pneumonia. According to French law, patients who died in the hospital were supposed to undergo an autopsy, but the writer was taken home, and on December 16 it was officially announced that he had died at home, in his villa, which became his last refuge. The writer does not have a grave as such, since his ashes were scattered under the wall of the Maugham Library, at the Royal School in Canterbury.

Somerset Maugham Personal Life:

Without repressing his bisexuality, in May 1917 Maugham married the decorator Siri Wellcome, with whom they had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Maugham.

The marriage was not successful, in 1929 the couple divorced. Somerset admitted in his old age: "My biggest mistake was that I imagined myself to be three-quarters normal and only a quarter homosexual, when in reality it was the other way around."

Interesting facts about Somerset Maugham:

Maugham always placed his desk against a blank wall so that nothing would distract him from his work. He worked three or four hours in the morning, fulfilling the self-imposed norm of 1000-1500 words.

Dying, he said: “Dying is a boring and bleak business. My advice to you is never do this.

“Before writing a new novel, I always re-read Candide, so that later I unconsciously equal myself with this standard of clarity, grace and wit.”

Maugham about the book “The Burden of Human Passions”: “My book is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel, where facts are strongly mixed with fiction; I experienced the feelings described in it myself, but not all the episodes happened the way they are described, and they are partly taken not from my life, but from the life of people I know well.

“I wouldn’t go to see my plays at all, neither on the evening of the premiere, nor on any other evening, if I didn’t consider it necessary to check their effect on the public in order to learn from this how to write them.”

Novels by Somerset Maugham:

"Lisa of Lambeth" (Liza of Lambeth)
"The Making of a Saint"
"Hero" (The Hero)
Mrs Craddock
"Carousel" (The Merry-go-round)
The Bishop's Apron
"Conqueror of Africa" ​​(The Explorer)
The Magician
"The burden of human passions" (Of Human Bondage)
"Moon and penny" (The Moon and Sixpence)
The Painted Veil
Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard
"Small Corner" (The Narrow Corner)
"Theater" (Theater)
"Christmas Holiday", (Christmas Holiday)
"Villa on the Hill" (Up at the Villa)
"One Hour Before Dawn" The Hour Before Dawn)
The Razor's Edge
“Then and now. A novel about Niccolò Machiavelli" (Then and Now)
"Catalina" (Catalina, 1948; Russian translation 1988 - A. Afinogenova)