W. S. MaughamThe English author William Somerset Maugham was born on January 25, 1874, and died on December 16, 1965. He was famous for his plays, books, and short stories. Maugham was born in Paris and lived there for the first ten years of his life. He went to chool in England and then to college in Germany. He went to London to study medicine and became a doctor there in 1897. He stopped being a doctor and started writing full-time. People were interested in his first book, Liza of Lambeth (1897), which was about life in the slums. But it was as a writer that he first became famous across the country. In 1908, he had four shows going on at the same time in London's West End. He finished writing plays in 1933, with his 32nd and final work. He then turned his attention to writing books and short stories. Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944) are Maugham's books that came after Liza of Lambeth. His short stories have been collected in books like The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940). Many of them have been made into movies, radio shows, and TV shows. Read More Read Less