The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley and 's 1824 sonnet, which begins and 'Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life and '. The novel was first published in serialised form in five issues of Cosmopolitan and (November 1924 – March 1925 and ). Beginning in May 1925, it was serialised in the United Kingdom in eight parts in Nash and 's Magazine.