Of Human Bondage

William Somerset Maugham (125 January 1874-16 December 1965) was an English writer known for his plays, novels, and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and attended a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practiced medicine, becoming a full-time writer instead. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908, he had four plays running simultaneously in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.

Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have been adapted for radio, cinema, and television. His great popularity and prodigious sales provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to belittle him as merely competent. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage—a book with a large autobiographical element—as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard.