Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
(January 25th, 1874 — December 16th, 1965)
William Somerset Maugham was an English author and playwright. He was an extremely popular writer during the 1930s.
Maugham was orphaned before ten years old, and mostly raised by a very cold paternal uncle. Most of the men in Maugham’s family were lawyers, but he trained to be a physician before abandoning that career to become a writer. His first novel sold out rapidly.
In World War I, he severed with the Red Cross and the ambulance Corps. In 1916 he was recruited into the British Secret Intelligence Service. He worked in Switzerland and then in Russia before the October Revolution of 1917.
Maugham travelled extensively, notably to India, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. His life experiences greatly influenced the content of his novels. His protagonist, Philip Carey, is generally regarded as an alter ego for Maugham himself.
W. Somerset Maugham is a book author.
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I was first introduced to this book via the 1934 film of the same name that was very loosely based on it. We watched it on Turner Classic Movies one evening and I thought perhaps that the novel would fill in some of the gaps that I saw in the film. This is a review of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
