Melville House Books

“I’m quite prepared to be entirely forgotten…â€

So said W. Somerset Maugham near the end of his life. And if he hasn’t been “entirely†forgotten -— his most popular titles have never been out of print —- the precipitous eclipse of his reputation might not have been predicted: Maugham was one of the most popular, bestselling writers of his era, and the best paid. You can see him talking about one of his biggest titles here:

Maugham was a particular favorite of Hollywood. All of his major books and several of his plays and shorter works were made into movies, most more than once. But, if Maugham himself was forced to sublimate a criminalized sexuality and his acrid observations of imperial racism, Hollywood did him one better, often supplying happy endings to films drawn from sources that were, as Ed Norton said of The Painted Veil, “unremittingly bleak.â€

Of Human Bondage got Bette Davis an Oscar nomination and made her a star in 1934. Six years later, in the second film adaptation of Maugham’s play, The Letter, she gave another dominating performance (her chief foil exclaims, “You must be insane!†— indeed, the famous Bette Davis eyes are displayed to unsettling effect). Most recently, Naomi Watts reprised the role of Katrin Fane in The Painted Veil (Watts and Ed Norton also produced); Greta Garbo made the original seventy years earlier. Bill Murray’s quixotic production of The Razor’s Edge in 1984 updated but did not supplant the Tyrone Power-Gene Tierney vehicle, in the running for Best Picture of 1946.

Maugham’s aesthetic prescription, “Prose ought to be simple and clear,†was as much at odds with modernist experimentation as his homosexuality was with the law of his time, and helps to explain some of the academic and critical dismissal he experienced.

The many biographies that have been published since Maugham’s death in 1965 have had the advantage of greater freedom, foregrounding much of what was implicit or concealed during his life.

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography, by Selina Hastings, to be published by Random House in May, promises to continue this rehabilitation of Maugham as our —- still more adventurous -— contemporary. Herman Graf, former publisher of Carroll & Graf, now with his own imprint at Skyhorse Publishing, has read the UK edition, published last year by John Murray, and highly recommends it.

William Somerset Maugham was born on this day, January 25th, in 1874.

Dan O'Connor is the Managing Editor of Melville House.