One of his best regarded works, Of Human Bondage (1915), a semi-autographical piece, was first panned by British and American critics as an overly sentimental romance novel. By 1914, Maugham produced ten plays and published ten novels. That did not seem to stop Maugham's commercial success. He was charged with plagiarism in Vanity Fair by Aleister Crowley, the subject of Maugham's supernatural thriller, The Magician (1908).
Maugham's work often blurred fiction and non-fiction elements. During World War I, he was a Red Cross ambulance driver, he served the British Secret Service in Switzerland and Russia where he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and he traveled extensively in India and and Southeast Asia. Maugham had an interesting career that shaped much of his writing before and after he became famous.
When his first book, Liza of Lambeth (1897) became popular and quickly sold-out, Maugham quit practicing medicine to begin writing full-time. Orphaned at the age of ten and raised by an emotionally cold uncle, Maugham decided to become a doctor, bucking the trend of the men in his family practicing law. William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), British playwright, novelist, and short story writer, earned the distinction of highest paid author of the 1930s. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane.The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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