Of Human Bondage: Introduction by Selina Hastings [Hardcover]

DEW. SOMERSET MAUGHAMwas born in Paris in 1874. He trained as a doctor in London where he started writing his first novels. In 1926 he bought a house in Cap Ferrat, France, which was to become a meeting place for a number of writers, artists and politicians. He died in 1965.

SELINA HASTINGSis the author of acclaimed biographies of Somerset Maugham, Nancy Mitford, and Rosamond Lehmann, and her biography of Evelyn Waugh won the Marsh Biography Award.Excerpt from the Introduction by Selina Hastings

WhenOf Human Bondagewas published in 1915, Somerset Maugham, then in his early forties, was well established as one of the most popular writers of his generation. His novels sold well but it was his plays, performed regularly on both sides of the Atlantic, that had brought him fame and substantial wealth. His first commercial production, Lady Frederick, staged in 1907 at the Royal Court in London, had proved an instant success and ran for over a year. By the following year four of Maugham’s plays were running concurrently in the West End, a record which for a living playwright was to remain unbroken for a generation.
 
As a successful dramatist Maugham was much in demand, not only in theatrical circles but by fashionable London hostesses: everyone wanted to know him and in the relatively small society of the time almost everyone did. With a large income now at his disposal, Maugham bought an elegant five-storey house in Mayfair and began to enjoy himself as a man about town. Described as ‘one of London’s wittiest bachelors and most indefatigable dancers’, Maugham was deluged with invitations, appearing in white tie and tails at dances and first nights, two-stepping in fancy dress at the Chelsea Arts Ball, waltzing at a charity event at Covent Garden. The artist, Gerald Kelly, painted a portrait of him at this period entitled ‘The Jester’, in which the playwright is shown as the epitome ol“n