William Somerset Maugham

Born in 1874, W. Somerset Maugham was orphaned young and raised in England, where feeling like an outcast fueled his skepticism of Victorian society. While studying medicine, his encounters with London’s impoverished inspired his debut novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), prompting him to pursue writing full-time. Maugham later served as a British secret agent during World War I and traveled extensively across Asia with his long-time partner, Gerald Haxton. These firsthand encounters with war, espionage, and foreign cultures profoundly shaped his acclaimed plays, novels, and short stories, defining his legacy as a master chronicler of human vulnerability and social hypocrisy.