The Summing Up

Front Cover
Penguin Books, 1963 - Biography & Autobiography - 202 pages
THE SUMMING UP is rare among literary autobiographies for its scope and honesty. While Maugham analyzes his work in drama and fiction, this is far more than a list of publishing triumphs. He sorts 40 years of experience and gives us the distillation of his ethic and philosophy. Like many other successful authors Maugham started as a physician, but writing called him early. At 23, based on his experiences in a slum hospital, he wrote LIZA OF LAMBETH, an immediate success, and thereafter left to others the care of vermiform appendices. -- Amazon.com.

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About the author (1963)

Writer William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris on January 25, 1874. He attended St. Thomas's Medical School in London. A prolific writer, Maugham produced novels, short stories, plays, and an autobiographical novel, "Of Human Bondage." Although he remains popular for his novels and short stories, when he was alive his plays, now dated, were also popular, and in 1908 four of his plays ran simultaneously. Maugham died in Nice, France, on December 16, 1965.