The Moon and Sixpence

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PENGUIN BOOKS 468 THE MOON AND SIXPENCE William Somerset Maugham was bora in 1874 and lived in Paris imtil he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St Thomas's Hospitál with a view to practice in medicine but the suecess of his íirst növel, Liza of Lambeth (1897) won him over to letters. Something of his hospitál experience is reflected, however, in the first of his masterpieces, Of Humán Bondage (1915), and with The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation as a novelist was assured. His position as one of the most successful playwrights on the London stage was being Consolidated simultaneously. His first play, A Man of Honour (1903), was followed by a procession of successes just before and after the First World War. (At one point only Bemard Shaw had more plays running at the same time in London.) His theatre career ended with Sheppey (1933). His fame as a short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, since when he has published more than ten collections. Somerset Maugham's generál books are fewer in number. They include travel books, such as On a Chinese Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935), essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer's Notebook (1949). In 1954 Mr Maugham became a Companion of Honour, Until his death in 1966 he lived on the Riviéra* Vissza