# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/w-somerset-maugham
# Generated: 2026-08-31T14:58:47.776Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/w-somerset-maugham"
name: "W. Somerset Maugham"
slug: "w-somerset-maugham"
description: "He trained as a doctor, never saw a patient, and instead became one of the twentieth century's most commercially successful writers — four plays running simultaneously in the West End by 1908, novels that sold in the millions, short stories adapted everywhere. Highbrow critics spent decades calling him merely competent."
tagline: "English playwright and author (1874–1965)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Maugham_retouched.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "United Kingdom"
  isoCode: "GB"
category:
  name: "Writers"
  slug: "writers"
profileType:
  name: "Writer / Author"
  slug: "writer"
birthDate: "1874-01-25"
deathDate: "1965-12-16"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           73.73
  momentum:             27.22528940338379
  historical:           25.858608
  currentAttention:     31.54247056495498
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  75
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: 236
tags:
  - name: "Writers"
    slug: "writers"
  - name: "Writer / Author"
    slug: "writer-author"
  - name: "Theatre"
    slug: "theatre"
  - name: "Fiction"
    slug: "fiction"
  - name: "Screenwriting"
    slug: "screenwriting"
  - name: "Literature"
    slug: "literature"
  - name: "Medicine"
    slug: "medicine"
  - name: "United Kingdom"
    slug: "united-kingdom"
platforms:
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    url:       "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0560857/"
    handle:    "nm0560857"
sources:
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikidata"
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    title: "Pantheon 2.0"
    type:  "DATABASE"
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    title: "سومرست موم"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Ўільям Сомэрсэт Моэм"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Уільям Сомерсет Моэм"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "William Somerset Maugham"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "William Somerset Maugham"
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    title: "W. Somerset Maugham"
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    title: "William Somerset Maugham"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham"
    title: "W. Somerset Maugham"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Somerset_Maugham"
    title: "William Somerset Maugham"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "W. Somerset Maugham"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
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  - url: "https://musicbrainz.org/artist/e16861d2-523d-401d-9819-a2237932a065"
    title: "MusicBrainz"
    type:  "DATABASE"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born in Paris in 1874 and schooled in England, Maugham qualified as a physician in London in 1897 but turned immediately to writing. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth, drew notice for its slum realism, but the theatre made him famous: by 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End. He wrote thirty-two plays before abandoning the stage in 1933 to focus on novels and stories. Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944) followed, along with story collections like The Casuarina Tree (1926). During the First World War he worked for British intelligence, later mining the experience for fiction. Although primarily homosexual, he married Syrie Wellcome in 1917 after a three-year affair that produced a daughter; the marriage lasted twelve years, but his principal partner was Gerald Haxton, with whom he travelled Asia and the South Seas gathering material, living together on the French Riviera until Haxton's death in 1944. He stopped writing novels after the Second World War, his final years dimmed by senility, and died in 1965 at ninety-one.