As Google has already informed you, it’s the birthday of Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941), whose use of stream-of-consciousness in her novels put her at the forefront of modernism. Her most important novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931).

It’s also the birthday of W. Somerset Maugham (born 1874), who famously said, “Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.” Maugham was referring of course to his own misfortune: he himself had a very loving mother, who died when he was eight. He never fully recovered from this loss and still mourned her at 90.

Maugham’s father died two years after his mother and he was sent to—you guessed it—a cold and cruel uncle in the UK (Maugham’s family had been living in Paris, where his father worked for the British embassy), who then—you got it—sent him to a school where he could be properly bullied. He developed a stammer that stayed with him intermittently for life, so thank you, Uncle Henry.

Maugham studied medicine but found enough success with his first novel (Liza of Lambeth, 1897) to focus on writing full time. Well, not quite: he became a secret agent in WWI, even taking part in efforts to keep the Russian Revolution from occurring. (I don’t know that he ever met Rasputin, but wouldn’t that have been interesting?) That didn’t go swimmingly but we can’t blame Maugham, who was well suited as a spy and later drew on these experiences in his book Ashenden: Or The British Agent (1928). Maugham was busy during WWI, also writing his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage (1915)—a semi-autobiographical novel which I can personally assure you is not about S&M, because I’ve read it. It’s about Philip Carey, who loses his beloved mother at a young age (see? see? who does that remind you of?), and is then bulled at boarding school, and then studies in Germany (which Maugham also did). Carey then studies art in France but realizes he’s not a good artist and returns to England to study medicine. He falls in love with Mildred, who’s kind of a train wreck, and I spent much of the novel yelling at Carey in my head, “Move on, Philip!” Well, the heart wants what it wants. I’ll say no more about the rest of the novel. It’s worth reading.

In his lifetime Maugham was probably the most famous writer in the world (sorry, Virginia) and certainly the most well-paid. He wrote 78 books, including novels, short stories, plays, essays. He traveled widely, learned people’s stories and used them for his keenly insightful fiction, knew absolutely everyone (including Edith Wharton and Henry James), and had many affairs, mostly with men. He lived luxuriously, and all morning I’ve had that line from “One Night in Bangkok” in my head: “Tea girls, warm, sweet / Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham Suite.” (NB: you can send me all the links to that song you want, as it’s an old favorite.) Maugham died in Nice in 1965 at the age of 91.

Have a fine Thursday on this day of literary giants, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.