William Somerset Maugham Analysis

William Somerset Maugham lived life of ninety one years and spent a long period of his life in writing. Being a popular novelist, playwright and short story writer, he was considered the representative writer of his age and his popularity over shadowed his contemporaries’ fame among readers.

Maugham lived in a French environment in his younger years. His mother tongue was French and he felt difficulty in speaking English in his childhood which made him stammer at times. He lost his parents at the age of ten, and was greatly affected by his mother’s death. As an orphan he was sent to his uncle Henry Maugham, where he spent the toughest time of his life. Maugham was trained as a doctor and studied medicine in St Thomas’s Hospital. In 1987 his first novel Liza of Lambeth, received an influx of fame that Maugham decided to adopt the field of writing instead to be a doctor.

His works are a strong reflection of his life. He faced the disastrous effects of both the world wars. During World War 1, he served as an ambulance driver and afterwards as a secret agent. His experience as a medical student affected him too; he states in his book The Summing Up: “I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain” (63).

Maugham earned a good name as a writer but his professional life began as a doctor. He served the middle class people, it was the time he learned their anxiety and misery. Later he stepped into writing and used all of his experiences as themes of his fictions. The impact of his