William Somerset Maugham

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William Somerset Maugham 1934,
photographer: Carl van Vechten

William Somerset Maugham [ ˈsʌməsɪt mɔːm ] (born January 25, 1874 in Paris , † December 16, 1965 in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat near Nice ), also known as W. Somerset Maugham , was an English storyteller and playwright . He is one of the most widely read English-speaking authors of the 20th century.

Life

William Somerset Maugham was the son of an English lawyer who worked for British clients in Paris. His parents died when he was a child. As an orphan , he spent his youth under the supervision of a devout uncle and in boarding schools . He suffered from stuttering. He studied German, literature and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg , and later medicine at King's College London in London . Despite his urge to read literature, Maugham successfully completed his medical studies in 1898 - especially under pressure from his uncle.

He cured a disease of pulmonary tuberculosis in the mild climate of southern France . After his recovery he moved to Paris. In 1907 he achieved his first major public success with the play Lady Frederick .

During the First World War Maugham served in the British secret service MI6 , for which he initially worked in Italy , Switzerland and the USA . From there he was ordered to Russia in 1917 , where the British tried to keep the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky in power so that Russia would remain in the war against the Central Powers . During this time Maugham was also an informant for the American secret service. Although Maugham was under suspicion of espionage throughout his stay , he was allowed to go - apparently out of consideration for his international reputation. So Maugham got to know leading Russian politicians by the October Revolution and wrote a large number of valuable reports. In the winter of 1917 he returned to Great Britain.

His experiences inspired him to write Ashenden: Or, the British Agent (1928). With this work he influenced later writers such as Graham Greene , Eric Ambler , Ian Fleming and John le Carré . Fleming admired Maugham very much, seeing him and himself as "the only writers today who write about things like that that people really enjoy: card games, money, gold, and so on." Like Greene, Maugham loved to travel, and that passion was evident in many of his novels. His travels to the South Seas and the Far East were reflected in short stories that Maugham published from 1921 onwards. In them there are gripping and authentic portraits of the “Englishman abroad”, colonial figures as they already populated Conrad's works and which Maugham knew how to depict masterfully with a skeptical, distant gaze.

In 1917, he married his lover Syrie Barnardo , the divorced wife of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome and daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, in New Jersey . William and Syrie Maugham had a daughter, Elizabeth (1915-1998). The marriage suffered from severe turmoil, complicated by Maugham's homosexual tendencies. His real partner was his secretary, the American Gerald Haxton. Haxton had a bad reputation; he is said to have been a liar, a swindler, a drunkard and even a pimp. Maugham later admitted, “I was a quarter 'normal' and three quarters gay. But I tried to convince myself that it was the other way around. That was my biggest mistake. ”The Maugham couple divorced in 1928. For the next thirty years they argued over money and their daughter's upbringing.

After the divorce, Maugham moved to the Côte d'Azur . He bought the Villa La Mauresque on the Cap Ferrat peninsula near Nice , which had previously belonged to King Leopold II of Belgium . Endowed with Maugham's fine art collection, this house became very famous. He planned his career carefully and soberly. In 1933 he gave up writing plays because he believed that at 50 he was too old to keep up with the changing trends in the theater world. In 1947 he founded the Somerset Maugham Award , a literary prize for young authors. In 1948 he wrote his last novel Catalina . In 1959 he finally stopped writing. Since 1950 he has been an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Maugham died of tuberculosis on December 16, 1965 at his home in St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered near the library at King's School in Canterbury . Maugham's second male partner, Alan Searle, argued with Maugham's daughter over inheritance.

To the work

William Somerset Maugham achieved early literary success with his first work Liza of Lambeth , published in 1897 - and sparked a scandal. In the novel Maugham processed experiences he had made as a doctor-to-be in the slums of London . The bourgeoisie saw it as inappropriate to portray the world of the workers in such a naturalistic way.

Years of self-determination as an author followed the book. He first worked as a playwright and wrote plays such as The Circle, Our Betters and The Constant Wife. In the early 20th century, four of his plays were performed simultaneously in London. His productivity was astounding: it usually took him only a week to write each act and another week to edit the piece. He later devoted himself to prose and wrote numerous novels and short stories .

Maugham's most important work is usually the novel Der Menschen bondage (original: Of Human Bondage ), an autobiographical story whose hero, Philip Carey, how Maugham grows up as an orphan with his devout uncle and is handicapped by a clubfoot (Maugham himself stuttered) .

In the English-speaking world, Maugham's work is counted as part of the so-called middlebrow literature, which, while being easy to read and high in entertainment value, reaches a remarkable artistic and formal level.

Works (selection)

  • Liza of Lambeth (1897) - Liza of Lambeth . Diana, Stuttgart 1953.
  • Mrs. Craddock (1902) - Triumph of Love (1957)
  • The Magician (1908) - The Magician (1958)
  • Of Human Bondage (1915) - Of Human Bondage (1939)
  • The Moon and Sixpence (1919) - Silver moon and copper coin (1927)
  • The Trembling of a Leaf (1921) - People of the South Seas. A Novella Circle (1932)
  • The Circle (1921) - The Circle (1923)
  • On a Chinese Screen (1922) - A Song of the River (1955)
  • The Force of Circumstance (1924) - Short Story
  • The Outstation (1924) - The Jungle Residence , Eulenspiegel Verlag Berlin, 1979
  • The Letter (1927)
  • The Painted Veil (1925) - The Colorful Veil (1928)
  • The Casuarina Tree (1926) - The Force of Circumstance (1959)
  • The Constant Wife (1927) - Do you think Constanze is doing the right thing? (1927)
  • The Sacred Flame - Drama (1928)
  • Ashenden (1928) - A Trip to Paris (1969)
  • Cakes and Ale or The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930) - His first wife (also called Rosie and the Artists )
  • For Services Rendered (1932) - For Services rendered (1932)
  • The Narrow Corner (1932) - Part of the Way (1934)
  • East and West - Gesammelte Erzählungen I (1934) - Ost und West , Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-257-06490-2
  • Theater (1937) - Julia, you are magical (also under the title Theater )
  • Cosmopolitans (1936) - World Citizens (1948)
  • The Summing Up (1938) - Half the truth
  • Up at the Villa (1941) - Up at the Villa
  • The Razor's Edge (1943) - On a knife's edge
  • The Lotus Eater (1945) - Short Story
  • Then and Now (1946) then and now (historical novel)
  • Catalina (1948); German Catalina , Zurich 1949, Munich 1987
  • Creatures of Circumstance (1947) - Appearance and Reality (1959)
  • A Writer's Notebook (1949) - From My Notebook (1954)
  • The World Over - Gesammelte Erzählungen II (1952) - The rest of the world , Diogenes, Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-257-06490-2 .
  • Books and You: A Brief Personal History of World Literature , Diogenes, Zurich 2006

Film adaptations

literature

  • Stanley Archer: W. Somerset Maugham. A study of the short fiction (= Twayne's studies in short fiction. Vol. 44). Twayne Publishers et al. a., New York 1993. ISBN 0-8057-0856-1
  • Ronald E. Barnes: The dramatic Comedy of William Somerset Maugham (= Studies in English literature. Vol. 32). The Hague et al. a .: Mouton 1968
  • Raimund Borgmeier: William Somerset Maugham. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . 3rd, completely revised edition, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , pp. 36–40
  • Bryan Connon: Somerset Maugham and the Maugham dynasty. Sinclair-Stevenson, London a. a. 1997, ISBN 1-85619-274-1 .
  • Rolf Cyriax : The playwright William Somerset Maugham. Univ. Diss., Freiburg im Breisgau 1968.
  • Selina Hastings: The secret lives of Somerset Maugham. Murray, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-7195-6554-0 .
  • Philip Holden: Orienting masculinity, orienting nation. W. Somerset Maugham's exotic fiction (= Contributions to the study of world literature. Vol. 68). Westport, Conn. u. a .: Greenwood Press, 1996, ISBN 0-313-29812-2 .
  • Raimund Lindenberger: Autobiographical Convergences in the Short Stories of Somerset Maugham. Stutz, Passau 2004, ISBN 3-88849-096-0 .
  • Anna Makolkin: Semiotics of misogyny through the humor of Chekhov and Maugham. Mellen, Lewiston, et al. a. 1992, ISBN 0-7734-9570-3 .
  • Robin Maugham: My Uncle Somerset and all the Maughams. Munich: List 1967
  • Jeffrey Meyers: Somerset Maugham. A life. Knopf, New York, NY 2004. ISBN 0-375-41475-4
  • Ted Morgan: Maugham. Simon et al. Schuster, New York 1980. ISBN 0-671-24077-3
  • Helmut Papajewski: The world, life and art view of William Somerset Maughams. Cologne University Publishing House, Cologne 1952
  • Samuel J. Rogal: A William Somerset Maugham encyclopedia. Westport, Conn. u. a .: Greenwood Press, 1997, ISBN 0-313-29916-1 .
  • Charles Sanders: W. Somerset Maugham. An annotated bibliography of writings about him. De Kalb, Ill .: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1970.
  • Sotheby & Co: Somerset Maugham Collection, Catalouge, the Collection of Impressionist and Modern Pictures formed by W. Somerset Maugham over the last fifty years. Day of Sale Tuesday 10 April 1962
  • Raymond Toole Stott: A bibliography of the works of W. Somerset Maugham. Kaye et al. Ward, London 1973, ISBN 0-7182-0950-8 .

Web links

Commons : William Somerset Maugham  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Honorary Members: W. Somerset Maugham. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 15, 2019 .
  2. Hans-Dieter Gelfert: What is good literature? - How to tell good books from bad ones . 2nd Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-51098-4 , p. 161 .