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English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 59, Number 2,
2016, pp. 139-152 (Article)
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For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elt/summary/v059/59.2.blackburn.html
139
Somerset Maugham’s Apocryphal
“Second-Rate” Status:
Setting the Record Straight
DANIEL BLACKBURN & ALEXANDER ARSOV
Trinity College, Hartford Sofia, Bulgaria
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874–1965) was one of the twentieth
century’s most productive, multitalented, and popular writers.
1
Never-
theless, he is widely claimed to have described himself as only “second-
rate.” For over half a century, the author’s putative admission of medi-
ocrity has been used by biographers, literary critics, and book review-
ers to disparage the quality of Maugham’s work, his status as a writer,
and his literary legacy. The common rationale is that the author’s poor
opinion corroborates that of certain critics, allowing his literary output
to be dismissed as mediocre despite its historic popularity. For exam-
ple, a review in the Times Literary Supplement states that “Maugham
thought of himself as a literary second-rater and critical opinion has
mostly been happy to accept his verdict.”
2
Likewise, the 2009 entry for
Maugham in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism states: “Although
Maugham achieved popularity and financial success during his life-
time, many critics have characterized him as a mediocre writer, con-
firming the author’s own assessment that he was ‘in the very first row
of the second-raters.’”
3
Although numerous books, papers, reviews, and websites repeat
Maugham’s alleged admission of “second-rate” status, versions of the
relevant quotation attributed to him markedly vary. Further, possible
sources of the putative self-description are seldom cited. The scarcity
of documentation raises an all-important question. Which if any of the
various quotations is valid, especially given that many other state-
ments
4
and writings
5
have been falsely attributed to Maugham? In
addition, in the absence of a historical context, one must wonder when
during Maugham’s long, sixty-five-year writing career and ninety-one-
year lifespan that he might have described himself in such a negative
140
ELT 59 : 2 2016
fashion. Questions also arise as to whether Maugham would have been
alluding to his plays, novels, short stories, or nonfiction, and whether
the tone was forthright or facetious—or an expression of the author’s
sardonic wit.
The main goal of this article is to evaluate evidence for claims that
Somerset Maugham commonly described himself as a second-rate or
mediocre writer. Toward this end, we have drawn on a comprehen-
sive search of a large body of literature by and about Maugham. We
also explore how Maugham did characterize his own work and con-
sider how the “second-rate” designation came to be viewed so widely
as Maugham’s own negative self-description. The issues are significant
because if the alleged self-description is spurious, then it cannot legiti-
mately be used to deprecate Maugham’s literary legacy.
Of Second-Raters, Ranks, & Literary Positions
A comprehensive search of the published literature on Maugham
reveals widespread claims that the author described himself and his
work as “second-rate.” For example, according to a prominent biogra-
phy, Maugham wrote: “I know just where I stand … in the very first row
of the second raters.”
6
However, the cited source (Maugham’s The Sum-
ming Up, 1938) contains no such statement.
7
An entry for Maugham
in the 2006 Encyclopedia of World Biography cites this quotation and
the same invalid source.
8
The most recent biography of Maugham cites
a similar quotation and references an ambiguous anonymous source.
9
With slight modifications, the alleged quotation also is repeated in
three other biographies of Maugham, but without attributing it to any
source whatsoever.
10
Versions of this quotation have been repeated in a wide diversity
of works, including critical essays, book reviews, reference works, we-
blogs, introductions to anthologies of Maugham’s fiction, and retro-
spectives on his career. None of these works cite an original source.
Maugham is variously quoted as having described himself as being “in
the front row of the second rate,”
11
“in the very front row of the second
rate,”
12
“in the very front row of the second raters,”
13
“in the very first
row of the second raters,”
14
“in the very top rank of the second rate,”
15
and “somewhere near the top of the second league.”
16
Likewise, he is
said to have called himself “the best of the second raters”
17
and “the
first of the second rate novelists,”
18
and to have characterized his own
writing as “first row, second rate.”
19
Other sources paraphrase the quo-
tation, stating (again without documentation) that Maugham labelled
141
BLACKBURN & ARSOV : MAUGHAM
himself “a literary second-rater,”
20
“the first of the second rate,”
21
“first
of the second-raters,”
22
and “at the top end of the second class.”
23
In
an unusual departure, another reviewer drew on the quotation’s con-
struction to offer a much higher opinion of Maugham: “that he will be
set among writers at the top of the first class, both as a novelist and a
playwright.”
24
Maugham’s alleged admission of being “second-rate” is common-
ly used to cast doubts upon his work and his status as a writer. For
example, the entry on Maugham in a popular reference work states:
“Maugham hoped to consider himself one of the best of the second rate
writers of his day.”
25
One review of Selina Hastings’s recent biography
of Maugham is entitled “Front Row of the Second Rate,”
26
while an-
other review that prominently features this characterization bears the
title “Read More Than Respected.”
27
Yet another book review asserts
that “Maugham’s conviction that his true rating was ‘somewhere near
the top of the second league’” was understandable, since “he was always
aware that he had never written an honest word in his life.”
28
Some
budding authors have invoked a version of the quotation to vindicate
their own low status.
29
In contrast, Maugham’s first biographer tried
to diminish the force of the alleged self-deprecation on the grounds
that a second-rate status is not necessarily disreputable. Thus, hav-
ing twice quoted Maugham’s putative claim to be among the “second
raters,” Richard Cordell argued that “‘second rater’ should not be an
opprobrious term in literary criticism,” since the description applies to
other respected writers.
30
A few works have adopted versions of Maugham’s alleged self-de-
scription with less-negative connotations by substituting the phrase
“second rank.” For example, a book review states that “Maugham ac-
cepted that he was only a writer of the second rank, but quite rightly
insisted that he was in that second rank’s first tier.”
31
A book-length
study of Maugham’s short fiction states: “Maugham has said of his own
position as a writer that he stands in the very first row—of the second
rank.”
32
A guide for student readers explains: “In assessing his own
career, Maugham wrote that he belonged not in the first rank of writers
but at the head of the second rank, and like many of his other critical
pronouncements, this one appears on target.”
33
Yet another popular
characterization stems from Lytton Strachey’s reaction to Maugham’s
1925 The Painted Veil. Having read the novel in 1931 while suffering
in bed from the flu, he reportedly pronounced it “class II, division I.”
34
Strachey’s laconic four-word assessment of this novel has been taken
142
ELT 59 : 2 2016
by later writers as a commentary on Maugham’s entire body of work,
35
as well as on Maugham’s comparative status as a writer,
36
and as a
description of Maugham’s literary status that the author himself ac-
cepted.
37
Given the absence of documentation for the alleged quotations in
works about Maugham, three important questions emerge and war-
rant consideration. First, how did Maugham actually characterize his
writing and his literary position? Second, was the author’s use of the
phrase “second-rate” at all consistent with how he described his own
work? Third, if Maugham did not describe his writing in this way, how
did the phrase “second-rate” come to be universally regarded as the
author’s own assessment of his literary works and status?
Maugham’s Self-Assessment
To gain a full perspective on Maugham’s views of his own literary
contributions, we examined all of the author’s nonfiction, including his
essays, commentaries, memoirs, book prefaces, and periodical contribu-
tions, as well as interviews (both in print and as films available on the
Internet).
38
We also consulted all English-language material that has
been published about Maugham in book form (including biographies,
memoirs, literary analyses, commentaries, and encyclopedias), in addi-
tion to many works from the professional literature, periodicals, gradu-
ate theses, and online sources.
39
In works authored by Maugham and in interviews with the author,
he never alluded to his own writing or literary status with the phrase
“second-rate” or its synonyms, nor did he ever use any of the above-
mentioned quotations that have been attributed to him. In addition,
while many sources about Maugham ascribe some form of the “second-
rate” quotation to him, none of them cite a primary or otherwise repu-
table source. Further, in several works that record Maugham’s verbal
statements (including books that relate long passages of detailed con-
versation),
40
no instance is reported in which Maugham ever referred
to his writing or literary status with the phrases “second-rate,” “medio-
cre,” or any synonymous phrase.
Maugham did describe how he regarded his own work and literary
legacy in his extended essays and book prefaces. Throughout, his tone
is forthright and unpretentious, self-effacing but dignified. Early in his
career, Maugham wrote modestly of his abilities:
My native gifts are not remarkable, but I have a certain force of character
which has enabled me in a measure to supplement my deficiencies. I have
143
BLACKBURN & ARSOV : MAUGHAM
common-sense. Most people cannot see anything, but I can see what is part
of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a
brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating. For many years I have been de-
scribed as a cynic: I told the truth. I wish no one to take me for other than
I am, and on the other hand I see no need to accept others’ pretences.
41
In The Summing Up (1938), he reminisced about his development as a
writer:
I discovered my limitations and it seemed to me that the only sensible
thing was to aim at what excellence I could within them. I knew that I
had no lyrical quality … little gift of metaphor.… Poetic flights and the
great imaginative sweep were beyond my powers.… On the other hand,
I had an acute power of observation and it seemed to me that I could see
a great many things that other people missed. I could put down in clear
terms what I saw. I had a logical sense, and if no great feeling for the
richness and strangeness of words, at all events a lively appreciation of
their sound.… [I]t seemed to me that I must aim at lucidity, simplicity and
euphony.
42
In a later passage of the same work, he reflected on his fiction: “But
though I have had variety of invention, and this is not strange since
it is the outcome of the variety of mankind, I have had small power of
imagination. I have taken living people and put them into the situa-
tions, tragic or comic, that their characters suggested. I might well say
that they invented their own stories. I have been incapable of those
great, sustained flights that carry the author on broad pinions into a
celestial sphere.… I have painted easel pictures, not frescoes.”
43
These
are the words of a writer with a realistic perspective on his own tal-
ents, one who presents his accomplishments with modest pride but an
extraordinary degree of candor and self-effacement.
44
Regarding his status as a writer, Maugham noted: “I have no illu-
sions about my literary position. There are but two important critics
in my own country who have troubled to take me seriously, and when
clever young men write essays about contemporary fiction, they never
think of considering me. I do not resent it. It is very natural.”
45
Com-
mentators on Maugham’s work invariably close the quotation before
the end of this passage, and thereby mistakenly present Maugham’s
observation as an admission of the inferiority of his writing. On the
contrary, in ensuing passages Maugham explains that he has eschewed
the popular “propagandist” novel, in which the author expounds on is-
sues of the day, as well as the “amusing trick” in contemporary works
of delving into the subconscious minds of the novelist’s characters.
46
Maugham’s criticism lies with “the world of letters” that has been
144
ELT 59 : 2 2016
taken up with literary fads that are unlikely to last: “It has been my
misfortune that for some time now a story has been despised by the
intelligent” in lieu of “the psychological, the pedagogic, the psycho-an-
alytical novels.”
47
Contemporary readers may or may not agree with
Maugham’s 1938 perspective. However, the fact remains that rather
than offering an apology for his own work, Maugham’s statement was
an explicit defense of stories of the traditional sort against transient
literary fashions of his day.
How Maugham Used the Phrase “Second-Rate”
A survey of how Maugham applied the phrase “second-rate” in his
fiction reveals why he would have been so disinclined to use it to de-
scribe himself and his writing. Throughout his novels, short stories,
and plays, he used it as a synonym for “mediocre,” “shabby,” “cheap,”
and “inferior in quality.” In a climactic scene in The Painted Veil, Walter
Fane bitterly tells his unfaithful wife, Kitty: “I had no illusions about
you.… I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I
loved you. I knew your aims and ideas were vulgar and commonplace.…
I knew that you were second-rate.… I knew how frightened you were
of intelligence.” Later in the novel, Kitty reflects on her lover: “After
thinking, thinking, all through those long days she rated accurately
Charles Townsend’s value: he was a common fellow and his qualities
were second-rate.” Meanwhile, Charles’s wife Dorothy considers that
“it really is not flattering to her that women who fall in love with her
husband are so uncommonly second-rate.”
48
In Maugham’s early novel
The Explorer (1909), the protagonist reflects: “Perhaps in a hundred
years, in some flourishing town … they will commission a second-rate
sculptor to make a fancy statue of me. And I shall stand in front of the
Stock Exchange, a convenient perch for birds, to look eternally upon
the shabby deeds of human kind.”
49
Works that use the phrase with
equivalent connotations include the novels Mrs. Craddock (1902), Of
Human Bondage (1915), Theatre (1937), and The Razor’s Edge (1944),
as well as the play Lady Frederick (1907) and the travel book Land of
the Blessed Virgin (1905).
Maugham used this phrase similarly in his short stories. In “Social
Sense,” the art-loving, sophisticated Mary is unable to resign herself
to the fact that her husband is only a “second rate painter.”
50
In the
story “Marriage of Convenience,” the expatriate circus proprietor is “a
perfectly commonplace little man and you would have been prepared
to find him running a garage or keeping a third-rate hotel in a second-
145
BLACKBURN & ARSOV : MAUGHAM
rate town in California.”
51
In “The Outstation,” the snobbish Mr. War-
burton reflects with “shame and misery” on his fellow expatriates, who
ridicule him behind his back: “he had always been gentleman enough
to let it make no difference to him that they were of very second-rate
position. He hated them now.”
52
In the tale “Neil McAdam,” a female
character shrilly dismisses Joseph Conrad as “a wordy mountebank,”
“that stream of words, those involved sentences, the showy rhetoric,
that affectation of profundity.… He was like a second-rate actor who
puts on a romantic dress and declaims a play by Victor Hugo. For five
minutes you say this is heroic, and then your whole soul revolts and
you cry, no, this is false, false, false.”
53
Particular insight can be gained by considering Of Human Bondage,
a novel with strong semiautobiographical elements. As a young man,
the protagonist Philip Carey reflects: “If I thought I wasn’t going to be
really good, I’d rather give up painting.… I don’t see any use in being a
second-rate painter.” A life of penury “was worth while if he produced
work which was immortal; but he had a terrible fear that he would
never be more than second-rate.” He explains to a friend: “If you’re
a doctor or if you’re in business, it doesn’t matter so much if you’re
mediocre.… But what is the good of turning out second-rate pictures?”
Philip ultimately gives up his art: “I don’t think there’s much object in
being a second-rate painter, and I came to the conclusion that I should
never be anything else.”
54
Such passages show that throughout his career Maugham used the
epithet “second-rate” as a synonym for “inferior,” including for creative
work produced by individuals of mediocre talent worthy of pity or dis-
dain. In his 1930 novel Cakes and Ale, Maugham presents a biting
portrayal of a second-rate writer in the form of Alroy Kear—a pathetic
character who offsets his mediocrity as a writer with a manipulative,
fawning nature. To suppose that Maugham repeatedly and publical-
ly described his own work and status as occupying that same realm
of mediocrity—one far inferior to the aspirations of his famous cre-
ation, Philip Carey—is highly implausible and quite incompatible with
Maugham’s self-effacing assessments of his own accomplishments.
Evolution of an Apocryphal Self-Description
A remaining question is how the “second-rate” designation became
widely assumed to be how Maugham commonly described himself and
his work. Literature on the author from the past half century offers
part of the answer. Since the early 1960s, alleged quotations involving
146
ELT 59 : 2 2016
the phrase “second-rate” (as well as versions with the phrase “second
rank,” “second league,” and “second class”) have been attributed to him
numerous times, although without documentation, even in the profes-
sional literature and in the foremost Maugham biographies. Clearly
the quotation is assumed to need no documentation. Notwithstanding
the existence of multiple versions of the alleged quotation, it has been
so frequently repeated that its legitimacy has never been questioned
in the literature.
The history of the “second-rate” designation can be reconstructed
from the literature.
While critical views of Maugham’s writing have
long been mixed,
55
the first prominent critic to characterize Maugham’s
writing in this particular fashion probably was Edmund Wilson. His
1946 review of one of Maugham’s later (and lesser-quality) novels,
Then and Now, began as follows: “It has happened to me from time to
time to run into some person of taste who tells me that I ought to take
Somerset Maugham seriously, yet I have never been able to convince
myself that he was anything but a second-rate writer.”
56
In the blis-
tering review that followed, Wilson wrote: “Mr. Maugham, it seems to
me … is not really a writer at all.” He considered Then and Now to be
“one of the most tasteless and unreadable books from which I had ever
hoped to derive enjoyment.” To put his criticism in perspective, Wilson
was wholly unfamiliar with Maugham’s work, and many years later
confessed to having never read any of Maugham’s major novels.
57
Nev-
ertheless, Wilson’s review was highly influential. It has been reprinted
in multiple collections,
58
and it may be the most widely cited critique
of Maugham’s works.
59
Within two years of Wilson’s scathing review, Louis Wilkinson (writ-
ing under the name Louis Marlow) recorded “a reported saying” that
was attributed to Maugham. Stating that Maugham “had no illusions”
about his position as a writer, Wilkinson passed along something that
Maugham allegedly had said: “I know just where I stand … in the very
front row of the second rate ones.”
60
Wilkinson classed the “reported
saying” with two other alleged quotations for which he could not vouch,
stating “perhaps he never said anything of the sort.” Indeed, one of
these alleged quotations appears to be a clumsy paraphrase of a pas-
sage in Maugham’s The Summing Up.
61
The inept transcription casts
serious doubt on the legitimacy of the other putative quotations, in-
cluding the “second-rate” one.
So a quotation that has long been attributed to Maugham has origins
in Wilkinson’s tentative, unverified report—a phrase for which Wilkin-
147
BLACKBURN & ARSOV : MAUGHAM
son cannot vouch that was allegedly transmitted by an unnamed party
from another unknown source. It may be significant that Wilkinson’s
“reported saying” is largely made up of phrases that do appear in
Maugham’s writing, sometimes in other contexts. At the beginning of
The Summing Up, Maugham stated: “when I have finished with this
book, I shall know where I stand.”
62
The phrase “I have no illusions
about my literary position” also appears in The Summing Up, and it
was recorded earlier in a preface to a 1934 reissue of Maugham’s first
novel.
63
As for the unusual “first … of the second” construction, a simi-
lar version appears in the novel The Painted Veil, in close association
with another component of the alleged quotation. Speaking of his skill
at cards, Walter Fane says, “I have no illusions about my play. I should
describe myself as a very good player in the second class.”
64
Interest-
ingly, Karl Pfeiffer reported that Maugham described his own bridge
playing in the same terms.
65
As for its application to Maugham’s writ-
ing, the “first … of the second” construction is strikingly similar in
meaning and form to Strachey’s “class II, division I” characterization
of The Painted Veil. Another relevant passage from The Painted Veil is
when Walter proclaims to Kitty: “I had no illusions about you.… I knew
that you were second-rate.”
66
An intriguing possibility thus arises. To paraphrase the modest
sentiments that Maugham expressed in The Summing Up, Wilkinson
or his anonymous source may simply have combined phrases that do
appear there (“I have no illusions about my literary position” and “I
know where I stand”) with ideas expressed by Maugham and others, re-
placing a more innocuous phrase with Wilson’s scathing “second-rate”
characterization. Wilkinson’s aforementioned, imprecise paraphrase of
another passage from The Summing Up offers evidence that this work
was an ultimate source of the quotation—one that Wilkinson was none
too accurate in his attempt to recall its source, construction, and mean-
ing.
Following the murky origins of the supposed quotation, its evolution
can readily be traced through the literature. Wilkinson’s 1948 essay
that contains the quotation was reprinted in modified form in his 1953
book Seven Friends
67
and in three subsequent editions over the next
forty years. Richard Cordell repeated the quotation without attribu-
tion in his 1961 and 1969 biographies of Maugham.
68
Versions of the
quotation were then picked up and disseminated by three subsequent
biographies (vide supra)—only one of which cited its presentation in
Wilkinson’s Seven Friends—as well as book reviews, commentaries,
148
ELT 59 : 2 2016
and reference works. Although many of these sources paraphrased or
modified the quotation in small ways, the “second-rate” designation or
its synonym was usually retained as a significant element of (alleged)
self-denigration. Following Hastings’s recent biography,
69
the quo-
tation was further disseminated in book reviews and websites, such
that it is now one of the most widely cited quotations attributed to
Maugham. The situation is ironic, since Hastings’s-+ biography argued
for a much more positive view of Maugham’s writing and historical
legacy than the spurious quotation implies.
70
For nearly seventy years, a spurious admission of mediocrity by
Somerset Maugham has been used to diminish the author’s literary
legacy. The problematic origins of his apocryphal self-description, its
appropriation of the “second-rate” label from a vitriolic critic unfamil-
iar with his work, and its subsequent transformations and their wide
dissemination as the author’s putative disparagement of his literary
contributions are now clearly traced and the record set straight. Given
the absence of evidence that Maugham ever wrote or uttered the words
in question, the time is past due to retire the false quotation long as-
cribed to him. Somerset Maugham’s writing deserves to be judged en-
tirely on its own merits, as does his legacy as one of the most prolific
and popular writers of modern times.
Notes
Acknowledgments: We thank Laurie Bonneau for reviewing the manuscript and Selina Hastings
for offering her perspective on the views expressed.
1. This claim has support in various critical works. See Robert L. Calder, W. Somerset Maugham
and the Quest for Freedom (New York: Doubleday, 1973); Robert L. Calder, Willie: The Life of W. Som-
erset Maugham (London: Heinemann, 1989); Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
(New York: Random House, 2010); Daniel Blackburn and Alexander Arsov, “Three ‘Lost Stories’ of W.
Somerset Maugham,” ELT, 57.1 (2014), 3–15.
2. Neil Powell, “The Respectable Narrator,” Times Literary Supplement, 5298 (15 October 2004),
21–22.
3. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau, eds.
(Detroit: Gale, 2009), Vol. 208, 88.
4. Wilmon Menard published a book of long monologues that supposedly came from Somerset
Maugham, The Two Worlds of Somerset Maugham (Los Angeles: Shelbourne Press, 1965). Calling
Menard’s book “shoddy” and “dishonest,” Richard Costa showed that the alleged monologues actu-
ally were taken from Maugham’s published writing from decades earlier. See Richard Hauer Costa,
“A Specious Summing Up,” ELT, 9.3 (1966), 172–73. Maugham’s nephew Robin Maugham published
three books that relate long, word-for-word conversations, some of which seem uncharacteristic of
Maugham. Robin Maugham’s ghost writer on his book Conversations with Willie (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1978) revealed that their work was fraudulent. Lacking sufficient material, they simply
149
BLACKBURN & ARSOV : MAUGHAM
invented many of the supposed conversations. See Peter Burton, Parallel Lives (London: GMP Pub-
lications, 1985), 89. The fraudulent nature of Robin’s reported conversations also was recognized by
two of Maugham’s biographers: Ted Morgan, Maugham: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1980), xviii, 380; and Calder, Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham, xv, 382. Various other stories
attributed to Maugham also are apocryphal; see Sewall Stokes, “W. Somerset Maugham,” Theatre
Arts, 29.2 (February 1), 94.
5. The month after Maugham’s death, Playboy magazine published a long (7,800 word) essay
under the title “The Wisdom of W. S. Maugham” (Playboy, January 1966, 75–80). The essay’s material
reportedly “was gleaned from him [Maugham] by California’s non-profit Wisdom Foundation” (5). Its
writing style and content clearly reveal that the essay did not come from Maugham, and it has never
been regarded as legitimate (for example, see the introduction to W. Somerset Maugham, A Traveller
in Romance: Uncollected Writings, 1901–1964, John Whitehead, ed. [London: Century Hutchinson,
1984]), x.
6. Morgan, Maugham: A Biography, 501.
7. The quotation is mistakenly attributed to page 221 of the British first edition of Maugham’s
The Summing Up (London: Heinemann, 1938). In search of this quotation and anything similar, we
also consulted the first U.S. printing of The Summing Up (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938) as
well as several reprinted editions (1940, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1969), including a version with a new ad-
dendum: W. Somerset Maugham, Mr. Maugham Himself, John Beecroft, ed. (Garden City: Doubleday,
1954).
8. “William Somerset Maugham,” in the Encyclopedia of World Biography (Detroit: Gale, 2005–
2006). Internet address: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/william-somerset-maugham-dtx/#gsc.
tab=0.
9. Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (London: John Murray, 2009), 360.
This edition cites “Dean, Seven Friends.” The 2010 printing correctly cites Louis Marlow, Seven
Friends (London: Richards Press, 1953), 160, where it is said to be a “reported saying” of Maugham’s.
10. Richard Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study, 2nd ed. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1961), 191–92, 242; Richard Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical
and Critical Study, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 191, 242; Jeffrey Meyers,
Somerset Maugham: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 383. Meyers repeats the quotation from Morgan,
Maugham: A Biography (1980) but notes that the cited source (Maugham’s 1938 The Summing Up) is
not valid.
11. Julia Gaunce, Suzette Mayr, Don LePan, Marjorie Mather, and Bryanne Miller, eds., Broadview
Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd ed. (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2012); Anonymous, “Selina
Hastings gives Somerset Maugham his due in her ample new biography, ‘The Secret Lives of Som-
erset Maugham,’” The Plain Dealer, 1 June 2010. Internet address: http://www.cleveland.com/books/
index.ssf/2010/06/selina_hastings_gives_somerset.html
12. Richard Canning, “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham, By Selina Hastings. Warts and
all: the picture of a bestseller as snob and parasite,” The Independent, 16 October 2009. Internet ad-
dress: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-secret-lives-of-somerset-
maugham-by-selina-hastings-1803285.html; Cheryl Miller, “Front Row of the Second Rate. A review
of The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography by Selina Hastings,” Claremont Review of
Books, 10.4, Fall 2010. Internet address: http://www.claremont.org/article/front-row-of-the-second-
rate/#.VRtJ_ujD_z4; Martin Rubin, “Read More Than Respected. His writing was widely loved. Crit-
ics begrudged him his popularity,” Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2010. Internet address: http://www.wsj.
com/articles/SB10001424052748703957904575252871142772504; David Askew, “Fugitive Pleasures,”
Dublin Review of Books, Winter 2009. Internet address: http://www.drb.ie/essays/fugitive-pleasures.
13. Klaus Jonas, William Somerset Maugham: The Man and His Work (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
Verlag, 2009), 35.
14. Nicholas W. Shakespeare, “Introduction” to W. Somerset Maugham: Collected Stories (New York:
Everyman’s Library, 2004), xi; Dinah Birch and Katy Hooper, Concise Oxford Companion to English
Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 453; “W. Somerset Maugham,” Short Story Criti-
cism (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Cengage Learning, 1991), Vol. 8, 355.
15. Isabel Colegate, “From Detachment to Further Detachment,” Rev. of The Razor’s Edge, The
Threepenny Review, Fall 2004. Internet address: https://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/
colegate_f04.html.
150
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16. Auberon Waugh, “Happy in His Malice,” Rev. of Conversations with Willie: Recollections of W.
Somerset Maugham, by Robin Maugham, New York Times Book Review, 25 June 1978, 10.
17. Tracey Morton, “W. Somerset Maugham—Realist or Modernist? A Brief Exploration of
Maugham’s Short Story Form,”13th International Conference on the Short Story in English (Vienna:
University of Vienna, 2014), 114.
18. Kurt Loeb, White Man’s Burden (Toronto: Lugus Productions, 1992), 66.
19. Kathryne S. McDorman, “Changing Views of Empire: The Imperial Themes of Somerset
Maugham,” Research Studies, 47.3 (1979), 145.
20. Powell, “The Respectable Narrator,” 21.
21. Daniel Curzon, Dropping Names: The Delicious Memoirs of Daniel Curzon (San Francisco:
IGNA Books, 2004), 119.
22. Jeffrey Kahan, Getting Published in the Humanities: What to Know, Where to Aim, How to Suc-
ceed(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 74.
23. Richard Davenport-Hines, “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings: Re-
view,” 20 Sept 2009. Internet address: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6199155/The-Secret-
Lives-of-Somerset-Maugham-by-Selina-Hastings-review.html.
24. John Pollock, “Somerset Maugham and His Work,” Quarterly Review, 304 (1966), 365–78.
25. Tom Payne, The A–Z of Great Writers (London: Carlton Books, 1997), 239.
26. Miller, “Front Row of the Second Rate.”
27. Rubin, “Read More Than Respected.”
28. Waugh, “Happy in His Malice.”
29. “I consoled myself with the words of Somerset Maugham: among second-rate writers, I was de-
finitively first-rate,” in Koonchung Chan, The Fat Years: A Novel(New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2012).
“How did I survive my own self-destruction?… Ok, I was second-rate, but that did not mean that, like
Maugham, I could not be the first of the second-raters,” in Kahan, Getting Published in the Humani-
ties, 74.
30. Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study, 2nd ed., 192.
31. Michael Dirda, “Selina Hastings’s The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham,” Washington Post,
20 May 2010. Internet address: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/
AR2010051905388.html.
32. Stanley Archer, A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne, 1993), 69.
33. David A. Gooding, Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence and The Razor’s Edge: Monarch Notes
and Study Guides (New York: Monarch Press, 1966), 5.
34. Michael Holdroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography; The Years of Achievement, 1910–1932
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), 698.
35. Anthony Curtis and John Whitehead, W. Somerset Maugham: The Critical Heritage (New
York: Routledge & Kegan, 1987), 1; Charles McGrath, “Another Encore for the Most Adaptable of
Authors, ” New York Times, 10 December 2006. Internet address: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/
movies/10chip.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
36. Anthony Curtis, The Pattern of Maugham (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1974); Ma
Chengyun and Qu Zhi, “Maugham’s Notion of Predestination as Reflected in ‘Of Human Bondage,’”
Overseas English, 2 (2011), 204–208; Bryan Connon, “Maugham, (William) Somerset (1874–1965),”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Internet address:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/34/101034947/.
37. “Willie appeared to accept with modesty and good grace Lytton Strachey’s verdict ‘Class Two,
Division One,’” states Bryan Connon, Somerset Maugham and the Maugham Dynasty (London: Sin-
clair-Stevenson, 1997), 373.
38. The most complete bibliography of Maugham’s work is by Raymond Toole Stott, A Bibliography
of the Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1973).
39. The following sources encompass most of the literature about Maugham: Troy J. Bassett, “W.
Somerset Maugham: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1969–1997,” ELT, 41.2 (1998), 133–84;
151
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Klaus Jonas, William Somerset Maugham: The Man and His Work; Charles Sanders, W. Somerset
Maugham: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University
Press, 1970).
40. S. N. Behrman, People in a Diary (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972); Richard Hauer Costa, An Ap-
pointment with Somerset Maugham and Other Literary Encounters (College Station: Texas A&M
Press, 1994); Garson Kanin, Remembering Mr. Maugham (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966); Rob-
in Maugham, Somerset and All the Maughams (New York: New American Library, 1966); Robin
Maugham, Escape from the Shadows (New York: McGraw Hill, 1972); Robin Maugham, Conversations
with Willie; Karl G. Pfeiffer, W. Somerset Maugham: A Candid Portrait (New York: Norton, 1959).
41. The passage is ascribed to the year 1917 in Maugham’s A Writer’s Notebook (Kingswood: Heine-
mann, 1949), 147.
42. Maugham, The Summing Up, 29–30.
43. Ibid., 83.
44. As noted by one commentator, his “detractors have used his own self-effacing comments in The
Summing Up (1938) and elsewhere to disparage his work and diminish his place even among the sec-
ond rank of writers.” See Irving A. Yevish, “In Defense of Mr. Maugham,” Michigan Quarterly Review,
12.1 (1973), 78.
45. Maugham, The Summing Up, 215–16.
46. “I have never been a propagandist. The reading public has enormously increased during the
last thirty years and there is a large mass of ignorant people who want knowledge that can be ac-
quired with little labour. They have thought that they were learning something when they read nov-
els in which the characters delivered their views on the burning topics of the day. A bit of love-making
thrown in here and there made the information that they were given sufficiently palatable. The novel
was regarded as a convenient pulpit for the dissemination of ideas and a good many novelists were
willing enough to look upon themselves as leaders of thought. The novels they wrote were journalism
rather than fiction. They had a news value. Their disadvantage was that after a little while they were
as unreadable as last week’s paper … while its vogue lasted it seemed much more significant and
so offered a better subject of discourse than the novel of character or adventure. The intelligent crit-
ics, the more serious novel readers, have since then given most of their attention to the writers who
seemed to offer something new in technique, and this is very comprehensible, for the novelties they
presented gave a sort of freshness to well-worn material and were a fruitful matter of discussion. It
seems strange that so much attention has been paid to these things.” Maugham, The Summing Up,
216–17.
47. Ibid., 219.
48. W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil (New York: Doran, 1925), 78, 148, 120.
49. W. Somerset Maugham, The Explorer (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1909), 278.
50. W. Somerset Maugham, Cosmopolitans (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1937), 283.
51. W. Somerset Maugham, The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 2: The World Over (Garden City: Dou-
bleday, 1952), 222.
52. W. Somerset Maugham, The Casuarina Tree (London: Heinemann, 1926), 142.
53. W. Somerset Maugham, Ah King (London: Heinemann, 1933), 286.
54. W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (New York: Doran, 1915), 244, 252–53, 267.
55. Anthony Curtis and John Whitehead, W. Somerset Maugham: The Critical Heritage; Joseph
Epstein, “Is It All Right to Read Somerset Maugham?” in Partial Payments (New York: W. W. Norton,
1991), 185–209; also see Bassett, “W. Somerset Maugham: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism,
1969–1997,” 133–36; Sanders, W. Somerset Maugham: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About
Him.
56. Edmund Wilson, “Somerset Maugham and an Antidote,” New Yorker, 22.8 (June 1946), 96–99.
57. Richard Hauer Costa, Edmund Wilson: Our Neighbor from Talcottville (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1980), 156.
58. Edmund Wilson, Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties (New York:
Farrar, Straus, 1950), 319–26; Curtis and Whitehead, W. Somerset Maugham: The Critical Heritage,
364–73; Edmund Wilson, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 40s (New York: Library of
152
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America, 2007), 725–31. Wilson reprinted the review as “The Apotheosis of Somerset Maugham,” with
an addendum that heaped on more vitriol. He described Maugham as “a half-trashy novelist who
writes badly and is patronized by half-serious readers, who do not much care about writing.”
59. Bassett, “W. Somerset Maugham: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1969–1997,” 133.
60. Louis Marlow [Wilkinson], “Somerset Maugham,” Writers of To-day 2, Denys Val Baker, ed.
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1948), 43.
61. Marlow [Wilkinson] attributed to Maugham the statement as “I haven’t more talent than the
next man, but I have more character,” 43. In The Summing Up, Maugham states: “My native gifts are
not remarkable, but I have a certain force of character which has enabled me in a manner to supple-
ment my deficiencies” (147).
62. Maugham, The Summing Up, 9, emphasis added.
63. Ibid., 215; emphasis added. In the preface to the collected edition of Liza of Lambeth (London:
Heinemann, 1934), Maugham states: “I have no illusions about my position in current literature, and
I do not think that I attach an exaggerated value to my works” (xii); emphasis added.
64. Maugham, The Painted Veil, 47, emphasis added.
65. Karl G. Pfeiffer, W. Somerset Maugham, 88; emphasis added. Pfeiffer states: “Maugham puts
into Fane’s mouth the same words he used to describe himself as a bridge player: a very good player
of the second class.” In a phrase reminiscent of the putative quote, Pfeiffer also describes Maugham
as “a good writer of the second rank” (210).
66. Maugham, The Painted Veil, 78; emphasis added.
67. Marlow [Wilkinson], Seven Friends, 160.
68. Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study, 192, 242.
69. Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (2010).
70. Hastings describes Maugham as “a man who had achieved such success in life, who had shown
such wisdom, such perception in his understanding of human nature” (543). “His love for his art, his
single-minded dedication, made him one of the most popular and prolific writers who ever lived, and
it is safe to say now that he will again hold generations in thrall, that his place is assured: Somerset
Maugham, the great teller of tales” (549).
