SOURCE: "Somerset Maugham," in College English, Vol. 2, No. 1, October, 1940, pp. 1-10.

In the following excerpt, Spencer discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Of Human Bondage.

One of the difficulties involved in writing a critical essay on Somerset Maugham is that he seems to have made such an estimate unnecessary by writing it himself. In a number of prefaces and especially in The Summing Up he has described his career, stated his beliefs, and defined his limitations. He has been as honest with his readers as he has been with himself.

Though I have had variety of invention, and this is not strange since it is the outcome of the variety of mankind, I have had small power of imagination. I have taken living people and put them into the situations, tragic or comic, that their characters suggested. I might well say that they invented their own stories. I...