William Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham, CH (English: William Somerset Maugham, IPA: /mɔːm/, ​​January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was a modern British novelist and playwright. He was one of the most popular writers of his era and was said to be the highest-paid author of the 1930s. Maugham's parents died before he was 10 years old, and he was adopted by an emotionally distant uncle. He didn't want to become a lawyer like the rest of his family, so he trained and qualified as a doctor. The first issue of his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth (1897), sold so quickly that he gave up medicine and turned to writing full-time. He served in the Red Cross and the Ambulance Corps during the First World War and was recruited into the British Secret Intelligence Service in 1916, serving in Switzerland and Russia until the October Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled to India and Southeast Asia, experiences that were reflected in his later short stories and novels.