W. Somerset Maugham as photographed in 1934 by Carl Van Vechten.

William Somerset Maugham (January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. Maugham wrote comedies, psychological novels and spy stories (although the latter part of his work is hardly ever seen as belonging to crime fiction proper).

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Maugham's severe stutter has been replaced by Philip's clubfoot.

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. The stories are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without descending into melodrama.

In 1917, in New Jersey, Maugham married his mistress, Maud Gwendolen Syrie Barnardo, a daughter of orphanage founder Dr. Thomas Barnardo and former wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome. (She became celebrated as Syrie Maugham, a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s.) Divorced in 1928 after a tempestuous marriage that was complicated by Maugham's homosexuality, they had one daughter, Elizabeth Mary Maugham (a.k.a. Liza) (1915 - 1998).

In 1947 he instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, still given to this day to the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a work of fiction published in the past year.

Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France on December 16, 1965.

Selected Bibliography

• Liza of Lambeth (1897)
• Mrs Craddock (1902)
• Of Human Bondage (1915)
• The Moon and Sixpence (1919)
• The Sacred Flame (1928) (play)
• Cakes and Ale (1930)
• The Summing Up (1938)
• The Razor's Edge (1943)
• A Writer's Notebook (1949)

Short story collections

• The Trembling of a Leaf (1921)
• The Lotus Eater (1945)

Somerset Maugham edited and finished the autobiography of the Victorian actor Sir Charles Hawtrey (1858-1923), called "The Truth at Last", which was posthumously published in 1924.

Maugham on film

• Being Julia (2004), based on the 1937 novella Theatre, with Annette Bening
• Encore (1952) dramatizes three Maugham short stories
• Of Human Bondage (1934) starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis
• Of Human Bondage (1946) starring Eleanor Parker
• Of Human Bondage (1964) starring Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak
• The Razor's Edge (1946) starring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney
• The Razor's Edge (1984) starring Bill Murray
• Sadie Thompson (1928), a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson based on "Rain", a 1921 short story from The Trembing of a Leaf (and several remakes)
• Up at the Villa (2000), based on the 1941 novella, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, directed by Philip Haas