A MASTER STORY-TELLER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30348, 25 January 1964, Page 3

A MASTER STORY-TELLER

W. Somerset Maugham, the world’s greatest story-teller, will celebrate his ninetieth birthday today. He was born in Paris in 1874. -His mother died when he was eight and his father, who was solicitor to the British Embassy, when he was 10- He was then sent to England and to King’s School, Canterbury. Later he went to Heidelberg University to study German. Returning to England he studied medicine for five years at St. Thomas’s Hospital, taking his degree in 1898. During the fourth year of his medical studies he worked for three weeks in the hospital’s midwifery department. On call night and day he attended 63 confinements in the London slum area of Lambeth during this short period. It was this experience that gave him material for his first novel, “Liza of Lambeth” (1897), and it was his ad-

miration for the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, which shaped his style. The success of “Liza of Lambeth” and his second novel, “Mrs Craddock” (1902), caused him to forsake a medical' career and concentrate on writing, and with the publication of “Of Human Bondage” (1915) and “The Moon and Sixpence” (1919), his reputation as a novelist was secured. It was his success as a playwright, however, that first brought him real fame. His first play. “A Man of Honour,” was produced in 1905, and by 1907 he had the distinction of having four of his plays running simultaneously in London. Somerset Maugham’s achievement in the realm of short stories began with “The Trembling of a Leaf” (1921) and continued to “Creatures of Circumstance” (1947). “The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham’’ are available in a

three-volume set published by Heinemann in 1951.

In 1938, Mr Maugham, who has always remained reticent about his private life, wrote “The Summing Up,” an account of his development as a writer, and his most selfrevealing book until “A Writer’s Notebook,” published in 1948.

The peace of Mr Maugham’s literary life at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera was rudely interrupted by the Second World War. He escaped to England and later went to America, where he wrote “The Razor’s Edge” in 1944. His last novel, “Catalina,” was published in 1948. His more recent books have been “Points of View” (1958), “Ten Novels and Their Authors” (1954) and “Purely for my Pleasure” (1962), an illustrated book about Mr Maugham’s collection of paintings which he auctioned at Sotheby's of London in 1962.