![]() ![]() ![]() He sought to tell a story with clarity and grace, to embody a set of attitudes and values, and to entertain his readers with insights into character and life. The symphony was forever altered by Ludwig van Beethoven no similar statement can be made about Maugham and the novel. Yet, it must be admitted that Maugham’s detractors, such as Edmund Wilson, present valid criticism: One expects a serious artist to exert an important influence, either thematic or formal, upon his medium. Among common readers, he was perhaps the most successful English novelist of the twentieth century, and, as Samuel Johnson pointed out, the common reader is not often wrong. ![]() The novels brought Maugham acclaim and recognition both from a general audience and from the intelligentsia. During this period, he was a worldfamous man of letters with a following of many thousands who would buy and read anything he wrote however, a few novels that he produced, such as Then and Now and Up at the Villa, were not in his best vein. From the publication of Of Human Bondage (1915) through The Razor’s Edge (1944), he produced his most significant prose works. Somerset Maugham’s (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) twenty novels are exceptionally uneven the first eight, though interesting, suggest the efforts of a young novelist to discover where his talent lies. ![]()
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