THE LUNCHEON Author Works William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer whose work is distinguished by a simple, uncomplicated language, cosmopolitan settings, and a keen insight into human nature His father worked as a counselor at the British Embassy in Paris, where he was born His parents both died before he was ten, so he returned to England to live with his fathers brother, a clerk He attended Kings School in Canterbury and Heidelberg U.