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When he graduated from Oxford in 1943, Poet Philip Larkin dreamed of becoming a famous novelist and living on the Riviera "like Somerset Maugham." But after two novels flopped in Britain, he decided he was better suited to poetry, confessing later: "It's like moving to a much smaller house after finding you cannot afford to keep up the mansion of your dreams." Larkin has become one of England's finest poets, but he may have deserted his mansion too soon. The second novel, A Girl in Winter, has now been published in the U.S.; and while...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Layers of Loneliness | 1/11/1963 | See Source »

...daughter never gave a rap about me," snorted craggy old Author W. Somerset Maugham, 88, and now the feeling was mutual. In a Nice court, Maugham filed a petition to disinherit Elizabeth Mary Maugham, 47, and recover some $2,000,000 worth of gifts he lavished on her since she was born. His penny-novel grounds: Elizabeth is not his legitimate daughter because she was conceived while her mother was still married to another man. He also cited Article 955 of the French Civil Code, which permits the recovery of gifts if the beneficiary is not properly grateful, and Elizabeth...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: People: Jan. 4, 1963 | 1/4/1963 | See Source »

Magical Power. At first glance, the six objects of Wescott's literary affection-Katherine Anne Porter, Somerset Maugham, Colette. Isak Dinesen, Thomas Mann and Thornton Wilder-seem to have little in common. But all illustrate Wescott's passionate belief in the magical power of a story to hold those brooding truths about human behavior that cannot be abstracted as philosophy or illuminated in the swift lightning of poetic metaphor...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Sound of the Seashell | 9/28/1962 | See Source »

With that belief established, Wescott lavishes high praise on the storytelling insights of Somerset Maugham and cheerfully states that Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain would be improved by pruning 300 pages of extraneous erudition out of it. Wescott's main critical contribution, however, is his experienced literary sightseer's infectious enthusiasm. "Let me not bully you about this novel that I love," he says engagingly of Christmas Holiday, a little-known book of Maugham's that he thinks is the best novel ever written about Europe just before World War II. His account...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Sound of the Seashell | 9/28/1962 | See Source »

...Universal were articulately querulous. Said one: "What audience would ever believe that the hero would want to get her at the fadeout?" The turning point of her career came in 1934 when she peroxided her hair and stole the show as Mildred, the mean little waitress in Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Says Davis: "She was the first leading-lady villainess ever played on a screen for real. I was the female Marlon Brando of my generation...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Mother Goddam | 8/17/1962 | See Source »

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