William Somerset Maugham, born in 1874, was orphaned at the age of ten and placed under the guardianship of his uncle, the vicar of All Saints' Church in Whitestable. Driven by a restless craving for freedom, Maugham experimented with a host of identities and occupations while growing into manhood. These formative experiences later served as the basis for Of Human Bondage.
Clubfoot. Also known as talipes, clubfoot is a congenital deformity in which the foot is twisted out of shape or position. Although readers of Maugham's novel are never told the details of the main character's clubfoot, there are in fact at least nine different forms of talipes. In Maugham's time doctors still had only partial treatments at their disposal; only in later generations would it become possible to correct clubfoot in infancy by manipulation, braces, and casts, and in severe cases by surgery.
Bildungsroman. A German word, Bildungsroman means "novel of education" or "novel of apprenticeship." The term was first used in reference to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796), which relates Wilhelm's progress from a naive, excitable youth to responsible manhood.
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