Novelist, playwright, short-story writer, travel writer, autobiographer, and essayist, W. Somerset Maugham wrote only one collection of short stories that justifies his inclusion in any discussion of spy fiction: Ashenden; or The British Agent (1928)....

The British novelist William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), one of the most popular writers in English in the 20th century, is noted for his clarity of style and skill in storytelling. Born in Paris, on Jan. 25, 1874, where his father was solicitor to...

When William Somerset Maugham celebrated his seventh birthday in Paris, he received from Lady Anglesey, a family friend, a generous gift of twenty francs. Asked how he planned to use his money, young Willie (as he preferred to be addressed) eagerly...

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 2, the 275th day of 2007. There are 90 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Oct. 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he was the first black appointed to...

"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair," the late British author W. Somerset Maugham has oft been quoted as saying. He obviously didn't live in the Anna Nicole Smith era.It's been two weeks since the aspiring heiress, reality star and just plain famous-for-being-famous Smith died...

"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair," the late British author W. Somerset Maugham has oft been quoted as saying. He obviously didn't live in the Anna Nicole Smith era.It's been two weeks since the aspiring heiress, reality star and just plain famous-for-being-famous Smith died...

Let the countdown begin. In addition to the rest of the holiday-season avalanche of awards announcements, 10-Best and 10-Worst lists, and last-minute openings to lure Christmas shoppers, moviegoers are now scratching their heads over two movies with titles similar enough to result in shopping-mall panic....

[Maugham wrote] novels about the kind of English society he knew best, doctors, the clergy, the military, the lawyers, and the formidable womenfolk who ruled their servants and their husbands with rods of iron: the good people who were the traditional fodder of the English novelist. (p. 35) The main novels in which we find Maugham's anatomy of Edwardian England and its values are The Hero (1901), Mrs. Craddock (1902), The Merry-Go-Round (1904) and The Explorer (1909). All of them have at their centre...

The immense success of Mr Somerset Maugham is not too hard to analyse. Any good journalist can give the reason of it, any good playgoer recognise the reason at sight. He knows his time. (p. 95) [To be abreast of his time in such a way that he is a hair's-breadth ahead of it] is the safe place for the playwright to be; and that is Maugham's normal position. He has the right journalistic flair in playmaking; he is as up-to-date as you please, but never "advanced"; he takes the worl...

The most mature fiction about the South Pacific is symbolic in nature. Works of Melville, Conrad, and Maugham … move beyond the superficial and the ephemeral into the realm of mythology. However, what these writers have in common is that they all make strong instinctive responses to the South Seas. (pp. 165-66) [Those works of] Maugham which are related to the South Seas follow the design of the adventure of the mythological hero described by Joseph Campbell: 'A hero ventures forth from the wo...