W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, he was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He was born in 1874 and died in 1965. He never practised medicine and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth of 1897, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity, and by 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London.