The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham TOGETHER WITH A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1908 Contents Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY In 1897, after spending five years at St Thomas’s Hospital I passed the examinations which enabled me to practise medicine. While still a medical student I had published a novel called _Liza of Lambeth_ which caused a mild sensation, and on the strength of that I rashly decided to abandon doctoring and earn my living as a writer; so, as soon as I was “qualified”, I set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville. I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat near Victoria Station. A maid of all work cooked for us and kept the flat neat and tidy. My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day (and the flat) to myself and my work. During the next six years I wrote several novels and a number of plays. Only one of these novels had any success, but even that failed to make the stir that my first one had made. I could get no manager to take my plays. At last, in desperation, I sent one, which I called _A Man of Honour_, to the Stage Society, which gave two performances, one on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon, of plays which, unsuitable for the commercial theatre, were considered of sufficient merit to please an intellectual audience. As every one knows, it was the Stage Society that produced the early plays of Bernard Shaw. The committee accepted _A Man of Honour_, and W.L. Courtney, who was a member of it, thought well enough of my crude play to publish it in _The Fortnightly Review_, of which he was then editor. It was a feather in my cap.