William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation.
For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim.
In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as ‘such a tissue of clichés’ that one’s wonder is finally aroused at the writer’s ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service .
He travelled all over the world and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.
Books in order of publication:
Standalone Novels
| Liza of Lambeth | (1897) | |
| The Making Of A Saint | (1898) | |
| The Hero | (1901) | |
| Mrs Craddock | (1902) | |
| The Merry-Go-Round | (1904) | |
| The Bishop’s Apron | (1906) | |
| The Explorer | (1907) | |
| The Magician | (1908) | |
| Of Human Bondage | (1915) | |
| The Moon and Sixpence | (1919) | |
| The Painted Veil | (1925) | |
| Ashenden | (1927) | |
| Cakes and Ale | (1930) | |
| The Narrow Corner | (1932) | |
| Theatre | (1937) | |
| Christmas Holiday | (1939) | |
| Up at the Villa | (1941) | |
| The Hour Before the Dawn | (1942) | |
| The Razor’s Edge | (1944) | |
| Then and Now | (1946) | |
| Catalina | (1948) |
Publication Order of Plays
| A Man of Honour | (1903) | |
| Mrs. Dot | (1912) | |
| Jack Straw | (1912) | |
| Penelope | (1912) | |
| Lady Frederick | (1912) | |
| The Tenth Man | (1913) | |
| Smith | (1913) | |
| Landed Gentry | (1913) | |
| The Land of Promise | (1914) | |
| The Unattainable | (1916) | |
| The Unknown | (1920) | |
| The Circle | (1921) | |
| East of Suez | (1922) | |
| Caesar’s Wife | (1922) | |
| Home And Beauty | (1923) | |
| Our Betters | (1923) | |
| Loaves and Fishes | (1924) | |
| The Letter | (1927) | |
| The Constant Wife | (1927) | |
| The Sacred Flame | (1928) | |
| The Breadwinner | (1930) | |
| For Services Rendered | (1932) | |
| Sheppey | (1933) | |
| The Noble Spaniard | (1948) |
Non-Fiction Books
| The Land of the Blessed Virgin | (1905) | |
| On A Chinese Screen | (1922) | |
| The Gentleman in the Parlour | (1930) | |
| Don Fernando | (1935) | |
| My South Sea Island | (1936) | |
| The Summing Up | (1938) | |
| Books and You | (1940) | |
| France at War | (1940) | |
| Strictly Personal | (1941) | |
| Ten Novels and Their Authors | (1948) | |
| A Writer’s Notebook | (1949) | |
| The Writer’s Point of View | (1951) | |
| The Vagrant Mood | (1952) | |
| The Partial View | (1954) | |
| The Travel Books | (1955) | |
| Points of View | (1958) |
Publication Order of Collections
| Orientations | (1899) | |
| The Trembling of a Leaf | (1921) | |
| The Casuarina Tree | (1926) | |
| Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular | (1931) | |
| The Book Bag | (1932) | |
| Ah King | (1933) | |
| The Judgement Seat | (1934) | |
| Cosmopolitans | (1936) | |
| Princess September and the Nightingale | (1939) | |
| The Mixture As Before | (1940) | |
| Creatures Of Circumstance | (1947) | |
| Quartet: Stories | (1948) | |
| Here and There | (1948) | |
| Trio: Stories | (1950) | |
| Encore: Stories | (1951) | |
| The Complete Short Stories | (1952) | |
| Collected Short Stories | (1963) |
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