Background Information on William Somerset Maugham.

William Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writ er. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest p aid author during the 1930s He was born on the 25 of January 1874 in Paris France. He died on December 16 19 65 in Nice. Maugham was orphaned at the age of 10; he was brought up by an uncle. After a y ear at Heidelberg, he entered St. Thomas medical school, London, and qualified as a doctor in 1897. He drew upon his experiences as an obstetrician in his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), and its success, though small, encouraged him to abandon medicine. He travelled in Spain and Italy and in 1908 achieved a theatri cal triumph in 1928, bought a villa on Cape Ferrat in the south of France, which became his permanent home. A short summary of the plot is as follows: The narrator, a book writer, recognizes a woman with whom he had lunch years ag o. He suddenly remembers an incident involving this woman from a few years ago. She wrote to him about his books and she wanted to meet him for a luncheon. He w as shocked at the time because she had picked a expensive restaurant and he only had a few francs to survive for the month. She starts ordering expensive dish a fter another and she leaves him broke. He then gets his revenge by seeing that s he now weighs a 140kg. The narration of the short story is first person. This is shown Did I remember?", "My heart sank", "as for myself, I chose the cheapest dish". This shows us his standpoint and we are moved to feel the same emotions or at least sympathize wit h the speaker on his situation of having a lunch with an old woman who eats him out of house and home. The short story is divided into three parts which are the exposition, the story and the climax. The exposition being the start where he looks back in memory 20 years in the past. The story being the luncheon and the climax being the woman s i ncrease in weight. There is a lot of irony in the luncheon as the woman repeatedly says she only ea ts one thing and it is only something small, but to the contrary she eats 5 dish es. The word luncheon also means to eat something small. The theme of the short story is appearance versus reality. It is first shown as he thinks the woman is much older than he though and then how she says she only eats one thing. The other example is how she said that she is a fan but she is o nly after a free lunch.