Մասնակից:Lucy.mkrtchian/Ավազարկղ

Վիլյամ Սոմերսեթ Մոեմ, CH (/mɔːm/ MAWM; 25 Հունվարի 1874 – 16 Դեկտեմբերի 1965), նույնպես հայտնի W. Somerset Maugham, was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.

Իր ծնողների մահից հետո, մինչ իր 10 տարեկանը, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a physician. The initial run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time.

During the First World War he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the October Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he travelled in India and Southeast Asia; these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.

Childhood and education

Maugham's father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil. His grandfather, another Robert, was a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the Law Society of England and Wales. Maugham refers to this grandfather's writings in Chapter 6 of his literary memoir, The Summing Up:

"...in the catalogue of the Library at the British Museum there is a long list of his legal works. He wrote only one book that was not of this character. It was a collection of essays that he had contributed to the solid magazines of the day and he issued it, as became his sense of decorum, anonymously. I once had the book in my hands, a handsome volume bound in calf, but I never read it and I have not been able to get hold of a copy since. I wish I had, for I might have learnt from it something of the kind of man he was."

His family assumed Maugham and his brothers would be lawyers. His elder brother, Viscount Maugham, enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939.

Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), had tuberculosis (TB), a condition for which her physician prescribed childbirth. She had Maugham several years after the last of his three elder brothers was born. His brothers were away at boarding school by the time Maugham was three.

Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died of tuberculosis six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. The early death of his mother left Maugham traumatized. He kept his mother's photograph at his bedside for the rest of his life. Two years after Edith's death Maugham's father died in France of cancer.

Maugham was sent to the UK to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable, in Kent. The move was damaging. Henry Maugham was cold and emotionally cruel. The boy attended The King's School, Canterbury, which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. Maugham developed a stammer that stayed with him all his life, although it was sporadic, being subject to his moods and circumstances. Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters.

Aged 16, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year in Heidelberg Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of Giacomo Meyerbeer, an opera composer.

After Maugham's return to Britain his uncle found him a position in an accountant's office, but after a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle tried to find Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were distinguished lawyers; however, Maugham wasn't interested. A career in the Church was rejected because a stammering clergyman might make the family appear ridiculous. His uncle rejected the Civil Service, not because of the young man's feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that it was no longer a career for gentlemen, since a new law required applicants to pass an entrance examination. The local physician suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle agreed.

Maugham had been writing steadily since he was 15, and wanted to be an author, but he did not tell his guardian. For the next five years he studied medicine at the medical school of St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth. The school was then independent, but is now part of King's College London.

Career

Early works

W. Somerset Maugham

Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham did not feel this way about this time. He was living in the great city of London, meeting people of a "low" sort whom he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."

Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a South London slum. Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "... it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue."

Liza of Lambeth's first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham, who had qualified as a medic, dropped medicine and embarked on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."

The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and to live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed in 1907 with the success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.