Minsik
Discover
Book Series

The works of W. Somerset Maugham

Minsik users reviews
0.0 (0)
Other platforms reviews
2.9 (8)
17 books
Minsik want to read: 0
Minsik reading: 0
Minsik read: 0
Open Library want to read: 47
Open Library reading: 4
Open Library read: 7

About Author

William Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was born at the British Embassy in Paris, France, where his father was an English lawyer handling the legal affairs of the British embassy. His mother died of tuberculosis while he was young, a death which traumatized him for life. Two years later, his father died of cancer, and he was sent to England to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable, in Kent. His uncle was cold and cruel, and the boarding school he attended, The King's School in Canterbury, was also miserable for him. At sixteen, he refused to continue at The King's School and he was allowed to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. In Germany, he wrote his first book, a biography of opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, and he met John Ellingham Brooks, with whom he had an affair. On his return to England he worked in an accountant's office for a month, then returned to Whitstable. His uncle sent him to King's College London to study medicine, although he had been writing since the age of 20 and intended to become an author. He continued writing nightly, and in 1897, he finished his second book, Liza of Lambeth. It was published in 1897, and it became so popular that Maugham, who by this time had qualified to be a doctor, dropped medicine and began writing full-time. He travelled and wrote, and in 1907 began to experience great success with plays as well as novels. In World War I he served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's "Literary Ambulance Drivers." During the war he met Frederick Gerald Haxton who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944. In 1915, he became a British agent operating in Switzerland against the Berlin Committee while posing as a writer. In 1916, he and Haxton travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon And Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin. In May of 1917, he married Syrie Wellcome, with whom he had had a daughter. In June of 1917 he went to Russia for the British Secret Intelligence Service, to counter German pacifist propaganda and keep the provisional government in power, a mission which failed. In 1927-8 he and Syrie divorced. In 1928 he bought Villa Mauresque in Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, and made it into a great literary and social salon as well as his home. In 1940, as France fell to German occupation, he fled to the United States, first to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter. He later moved to the South. When Haxton died in 1944, he returned to England, then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived until his death. Alan Searle became his companion until his death in 1965.

Description

There is no description yet, we will add it soon.

Books in this Series

Selected prefaces and introductions of W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
0

The Narrow Corner

Basil Copper, William Somerset Maugham
2.5 (2)
6

Cosmopolitans

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
3

Creatures of circumstance

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
4

For contents, see Author Catalog.

Christmas Holiday

William Somerset Maugham
2.7 (3)
0

The making of a saint

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
2

A soldier of fortune becomes embroiled in a conspiracy against Count Girolamo of Romagna.

The vagrant mood

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
1

Books and you

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
0

Seventeen Lost Stories

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
4

A collection of seventeen little known short stories by an author considered to be the master of situation and irony.

Great novelists and their novels

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
4

Mrs Craddock

William Somerset Maugham
4.0 (1)
7

Sheppey

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
1

Ah King

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
10

Ah King is a striking collection of Maugham's finest stories about life and love in the lush tropics he knows so well: Neil MacAdam -- A native young man fights seduction at the hands of the voluptuous wife of his best friend... Footprints in the Jungle -- The Cartwrights were a charming couple. Only Inspector Gaze knew that their marriage was founded on adultery and murder... The Book-Bag -- Tim Hardy and his sister have a strange sexual relationship on a remote rubber plantation. His marriage to another girl brings a tragic climax that shatters three lives... The Vessel of Wrath -- Ginger Ted was a brawling, wenching beachcomber. Only the missionary's spinster sister could hope to tame him...

The Trembling of a Leaf

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
4

Don Fernando

William Somerset Maugham
0.0 (0)
0

Up at the Villa

William Somerset Maugham
2.0 (1)
10

A novella, first published in 1941, about a young widow who becomes involved, against her better judgement, with three men. When one of the men kills himself at the villa in Florence where she is staying she decides to dispose of the body rather than call the police.

Catalina

Florence Delay, Markus Orths, William Somerset Maugham
4.0 (1)
2

Was, wenn ein Mädchen sich entscheidet, als Mann zu leben? Ihre Haare abschneidet, Männerkleidung trägt und ihr Verhalten der neuen Rolle anpaßt? Was, wenn sie die fremde Identität mit der Zeit immer mehr verinnerlicht? 'Ganz von vorn beginnen, ein neuer Mensch, selber zusammengenäht, selber gestrickt in der Finsternis.' CATALINA: Das ist die Geschichte von Catalina de Erauso, die im 17. Jahrhundert lebte, eine schmale Autobiographie hinterließ und ein unglaubliches Leben führte. Markus Orths erfindet dieses Leben noch einmal neu: packend, rasant, kenntnisreich und voll unglaublicher Ereignisse und Wendungen. An einem strahlend blauen 'Sonnenregentag' in San Sebastián wird Catalina als sechstes und letztes Kind von María Pérez de Galarraga y Arce geboren. Ihr zehn Jahre älterer Bruder Miguel, zu dem Catalina eine innige Beziehung entwickelt, entfacht in ihr eine Sehnsucht nach der Neuen Welt: die Silberminen Potosís, der damals reichsten Stadt Südamerikas, größer noch als Paris, Rom oder London. Als Miguel die Familie für immer verläßt und nach Potosí aufbricht, hat Catalina nur noch einen Wunsch: Ihm hinterherfahren! schwor sie, und etwas Neues füllte sie aus, etwas, an das sie sich klammern konnte, von nun an, für immer, etwas, an das sie mit Besessenheit glauben konnte, ein Ziel, ein Sinn, eine Aufgabe.' Und was sie auf dem Weg von San Sebastián nach Neu-Spanien, Chile und Peru erlebt, ist die atemberaubende Geschichte einer verzweifelten Suche nach dem anderen, die zugleich die Suche nach sich selbst ist.