N B C University Theater - Of Human Bondage

Written by W. Somerset Maugham

Narrated by Brian Aherne and Angela Lansbury

'NBC University Theater’ initially started in Chicago with a remit to bring adaptations of classic novels, usually Anglo-American, to a radio audience.

Additionally, if listeners signed up they received college credit to a radio-assisted correspondence course. A study guide, The Handbook of the World's Great Novels, was available for 25 cents.

In its later years it also included short stories and plays and went on to win the distinguished Peabody award.

Unlike many other radio shows University Theatre did not pursue the glamourous stars for its productions but instead relied on excellent distillations of the novels and first class acting alongside high production values.

But now its time to enjoy these timeless novels. Let’s begin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839670435

W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Born in Paris, he was orphaned as a boy and sent to live with an emotionally distant uncle. He struggled to fit in as a student at The King’s School in Canterbury and demanded his uncle send him to Heidelberg University, where he studied philosophy and literature. In Germany, he had his first affair with an older man and embarked on a career as a professional writer. After completing his degree, Maugham moved to London to begin medical school. There, he published Liza of Lambeth (1897), his debut novel. Emboldened by its popular and critical success, he dropped his pursuit of medicine to devote himself entirely to literature. Over his 65-year career, he experimented in form and genre with such works as Lady Frederick (1907), a play, The Magician (1908), an occult novel, and Of Human Bondage (1915). The latter, an autobiographical novel, earned Maugham a reputation as one of the twentieth century’s leading authors, and continues to be recognized as his masterpiece. Although married to Syrie Wellcome, Maugham considered himself both bisexual and homosexual at different points in his life. During and after the First World War, he worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service as a spy in Switzerland and Russia, writing of his experiences in Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1927), a novel that would inspire Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. At one point the highest-paid author in the world, Maugham led a remarkably eventful life without sacrificing his literary talent.