Maugham was one of the most famous fiction writers of the English language. He has written novels, plays, and autobiographies, but he is best known for his short stories. His novels are among the bestselling books in England and America, and his writings have been used by many film and television productions. One of Maugham's greatest achievements is to have four of his plays in England at the same time (Leavitt). Maugham was a great story teller with a lot of experience which was influenced by his childhood and life choices but he was criticized by many as not a great writer just a really good story teller. .
William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874, in the British embassy in Paris to Robert Ormond Maugham and his wife, a very wealthy British lawyer who worked for the British embassy in Paris. William lost his parents at a very young age and was brought up by his uncle in Kent. According to Maugham in his book "Summing Up", "My parents died when I was so young, my mother when I was eight, my father when I was ten, that I know little of them but from hearsay.He was forty when he married my mother, who was more than twenty years younger. She was a very beautiful woman and he was a very ugly man. I have been told that they were known in Paris of that day as Beauty and the Beast.I have a little photograph of her, a middle-aged woman in a crinoline with fine eyes and a look of good-humored determination. My mother was very small, with large brown eyes and hair of rich reddish gold, exquisite features, and a lovely skin" (Somerset Maugham). At the age of 16 he was seduced by John Ellingham Brooks who also encouraged him to write while he was away in Germany to learn German. At 18, after coming back to England, he started training in medicine and did writing on the side (Somerset Maugham). After his first success in writing, he abandoned medicine and perused his career as a full time writer.
The main character of the novel, Charles Strickland, is a prosperous stockbroker. At the beginning of the book the reader sees him through the eyes of a young writer, the narrator of the novel: a very dull, quiet man, not in the least interested in literature or the arts(34), a typical broker. Then ...
