His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King’s School, Canterbury.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. In his last years Maugham adopted Alan Searle as his son to ensure that he would inherit his estate, a move which exposed Maugham to the public ridicule.
Maugham died in Nice on Decemat the age of 91. He was one of the most famous and wealthiest writers in the English-speaking world. In 1954, on his eightieth birthday, he was made a Companion of Honorary senator of Heidelberg University. He was forced to flee after the collapse of France in 1940 but returned after the war. In the early 1928, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque in the south of France, though he continued to travel widely. These events served in part to shape the character of a man who was sensitive and perceptive yet also timorous and withdrawn, an outside observer of life’s experiences rather than one totally and passionately immersed in them. Maugham’s breakthrough novel was the semi-auto-biographical ‘ Of Human Bond-age’ (1915), fictional recounting of his unhappy attendance at The King’s School in Canterbury, his liberating year of study abroad in Heidelberg and his return to London. He then set off with a friend on a series of travels to eastern Asia, The Pacific Islands and Mexico. He also worked for a short period of time in 1917 in Russia but his stuttering and poor health hindered his career in this field. By 1914 Maugham was famous, with 10 novels published.ĭuring World War I Maugham served in France as an espionage agent. His first play, A Man of Honour, was produced in1903. In 1897, Maugham’s life took a new turn as his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, which drew on his experiences of attending women in childbirth was a huge success. He then chose the profession of Medicine and spent six years intraining at a London hospital but abandoned medicine after the success of his novels and plays. Thus Maugham was miserable both at the Vicarage and at school.Īt sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at the King’s school and his Uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, Philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. He was teased and bullied which resulted in developing the stammer which stayed with him all his life. Maugham’s uncle was cold and emotionally cruel and the school, King’s school, Canterbury proved merely another version of purgatory.
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