Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was one of the most successful authors of the first half of the 20th century.

One of his best-known works, the 1915 novel Of Human Bondage centers on a medical student who becomes sadomasochistically obsessed with a woman who in turn becomes increasingly abusive.

During WWI, Maugham served with the Red Cross before being recruited into the British Secret Intelligence Service. During and after the war, he traveled across India and Southeast Asia, both of which had an impact on his later work.

Maugham had a relationship with Syrie Wellcome, a married woman, and they had a child. Eventually, her husband divorced her and she married Maugham. The marriage, however, was unhappy, and the couple separated. Maugham thereafter lived in the French Riviera with his partner Gerald Haxton until Haxton’s death in 1944, after which he lived with Alan Searle until his own death in 1965.

Maugham’s voluminous bibliography includes 16 books, 20 novels, 189 articles, 16 collections, and 25 plays.

In addition to his 13-year marriage to Syrie Wellcome, he had affairs with other women in his youth. Maugham once told his nephew, Robin Maugham,

I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer— whereas really it was the other way around. ^[1]