Background and Resources

[Everyman]

My usual practice is to read novels as self-contained works, without spending much time or effort in trying to link them to the author and aspects of the author's life.

For Of Human Bondage, however, this may not be good enough. The novel is, as Maugham himself said,
"not an autobiography but an autobiographical novel." But he wrote it at least in part as a catharsis, to try to excise some of the demons of his early years. And it seems to have succeeded: reflecting on the book he wrote "I found myself free from the pains and unhappy recollections that had tormented me."

The book was very much a product of the younger Maugham. He initially wrote the manuscript, then titled "The Artistic Temperament of Stephen Carey" when he was only 23. When he couldn't sell it, he put it aside and turned to work in the theater, at which he was quite successful. But, he wrote, "I was no sooner firmly established as the most popular dramatist of the day than I began once more to be obsessed by the teeming memories of my past life." He revised the book and offered it again, and this time it was published, in 1915, when he was 41.

I don't want to get too tied up in trying to link every aspect of the book to Maugham's life, because he made clear that it was a mish-mash of fact and fiction. In addition, even Maugham scholars differ on some of the main psychological aspects of the book and how they relate to aspects of Maugham's life. But I think that at least knowing some of Maugham's early history and the demons he was trying to exorcise in writing the book will make the reading more interesting and the discussion richer.

[Alana]

I didn't realize it was supposed to be semi-autobiographical, so that will make it even more interesting!