Reply With QuoteHe was a great story teller and literary critics distrust writers who are popular, prolific, and whose output isn't just variations of their own life. And Maugham was guilty of all three, hence the reason for the literary decline of his reputation.
Sunday Times "Biography of the Year":
When towards the end of his long, eventful, mainly undercover life, Maugham had his portrait painted by Graham Sutherland, he was shocked.
"I began to realise that here was more of me than I ever saw myself."
He might have said the same of Hastings's revelatory study. Orphaned at 10, Maugham was raised by a joyless uncle and bullied at school for his stammer.
Persuading himself that he was "three-quarters normal and that only a third of him was queer, when it was the other way round", he made a spectacularly disastrous marriage. Happiness lay in writing, spending money and travelling the Far East with Gerald Haxton, his lover for 30 years.
He was the world's richest and most successful author, but his death in 1965 was followed by one of the steepest declines in literary reputation on record, after which nobody gave him much thought.
This sympathetic and absorbing biography will change all that. Maugham led a life of extremes, and it is the violence of his successes and failures that gives his story such a mythical quality.
Selina Hastings approaches her fabulously complex subject with a cool, assured elegance that keeps you reading to the very end.
He was a great story teller and literary critics distrust writers who are popular, prolific, and whose output isn't just variations of their own life. And Maugham was guilty of all three, hence the reason for the literary decline of his reputation.
name='Maurice']Sunday Times "Biography of the Year":
When towards the end of his long, eventful, mainly undercover life, Maugham had his portrait painted by Graham Sutherland, he was shocked.
"I began to realise that here was more of me than I ever saw myself."
He might have said the same of Hastings's revelatory study. Orphaned at 10, Maugham was raised by a joyless uncle and bullied at school for his stammer.
Persuading himself that he was "three-quarters normal and that only a third of him was queer, when it was the other way round", he made a spectacularly disastrous marriage. Happiness lay in writing, spending money and travelling the Far East with Gerald Haxton, his lover for 30 years.
He was the world's richest and most successful author, but his death in 1965 was followed by one of the steepest declines in literary reputation on record, after which nobody gave him much thought.
This sympathetic and absorbing biography will change all that. Maugham led a life of extremes, and it is the violence of his successes and failures that gives his story such a mythical quality.
Selina Hastings approaches her fabulously complex subject with a cool, assured elegance that keeps you reading to the very end.
Maugham was the first adult novelist I read at the age of 14 and I couldn't get enough of him. I loved the way he wrote and thought every sentence beautifully constructed, every story original and interesting. I know he blatantly wrote about people he knew, some of whom recognised themselves and were more than miffed, but he wasn't alone in doing this.
The biography was on my Xmas Wish List, and I now see someone has bought it for me. Yippee!
I'm in agreement with Windyridge and will.15 but I do wonder why another biog of Maugham was needed. All of the details I've read in the many reviews of the Hastings book suggest to me that there's nothing new in this tome that hasn't already appeared in Ted Morgan's magisterial biography of some years ago. And the catalogue of my library has at least 7 biogs of Maugham. I'm always surprised that some subjects attract several biographers when there's nothing new to be said, when other figures who well merit a biog are neglected. Strange.
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