저자 : 서머셋 모옴 (W. Somerset Maugham)
영국의 소설가로 파리 주재 영국 대사관 고문 변호사의 아들로 태어나 10세 때 양친을 잃고 목사인 백부 밑에서 성장하였다. 한때 독일의 하이델베르크 대학에 유학했으나 런던의 의학교를 졸업하였고, 다시 작가를 지망하여 무명 작가 생활을 하였다. 1897년 첫소설『램버드의 라이저』로 문단의 주목을 끌었고, 1907년 무렵부터 희극 각본이 주목을 끌었다. 제1차대전 때에는 군의관으로 근무, 첩보부원을 하기도 했고 전후에는 극작 외에 소설을 많이 썼다. 희극에는『바퀴』『윗사람들』등이 있고 소설로는『인간의 굴레』『달과 6펜스』등이 유명하다.
W. Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He afterwards walked the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital with a view to practice in medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), won him over to letters. Something of his hospital experience is reflected, however, in the first of his masterpieces, Of Human Bondage (1915), and with The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation as a novelist was assured.
His position as one of the most successful playwrights on the London stage was being consolidated simultaneously. His first play, A Man of Honour (1903), was followed by a procession of successes just before and after the First World War. (At one point only Bernard Shaw had more plays running at the same time in London.) His theatre career ended with Sheppey (1933).
His fame as a short-story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, sub-titled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections.
W. Somerset Maugham's general books are fewer in number. They include travel books, such as On a Chinese Screen (1922) and Don Fernando (1935), essays, criticism, and the self-revealing The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer's Notebook (1949).
W. Somerset Maugham became a Companion of Honour in 1954. He died in 1965.