Book description
Autobiographical without being an autobiography, confessional without
disclosing his private self,
The Summing Up
, written when Maugham was sixty-four, is an inimitable expression of a
personal credo. It is not only a classic avowal of a professional
author's ideas about style, literarture, art, drama and philosophy, but
also an illuminating insight into this great writer's craft. William
Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten.
He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg
University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of
practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth,
published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage
, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the
publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence
his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame
as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with
acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several
short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays,
criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up
and A Writer's Notebook
. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived
there until his death in 1965
