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William Somerset Maugham
The book sold well and he decided to abandon medicine and become a full-time writer. Maugham achieved fame with his play Lady Frederick (1907), a comedy about money and marriage. By 1908 Maugham had four plays running simultaneously in London. On the outbreak of the First World War, Maugham, now aged forty, joined a Red Cross ambulance unit in France. While serving on the Western Front he met the 22 year old American, Gerald Haxton. The two men became lovers and lived together for the next thirty years. During the war Maugham was invited by Sir John Wallinger, head of Britain's Military Intelligence (MI6) in France, to act as a secret service agent. Maugham agreed and over the next few years acted as a link between MI6 in London and its agents working in Europe. Maugham had sexual relationships with both men and women and in 1915, Syrie Wellcome, the daughter of Dr. Thomas Barnardo, gave birth to his child. Her husband, Henry Wellcome, cited Maugham as co-respondent in divorce proceedings. After the divorce in 1916, Maugham married Syrie but continued to live with Gerald Haxton. During the war, Maugham's best-known novel, Of Human In his later years Maugham wrote his autobiography, Summing Up (1938) and works of fiction such as The Razor's Edge (1945), Catalina (1948) and Quartet (1949). William Somerset Maugham died in 1965.
Date: 2015-12-18; view: 2134
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