Liza of Lambeth (1897) was W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, which he wrote while working as a doctor at a hospital in Lambeth, then a working class district of London. It depicts the life of Liza Kemp, an 18-year-old factory worker who lives together with her aging mother in Vere Street (obviously fictional) off Westminster Bridge Road (real) in Lambeth. A lively, sociable young woman, Lisa is adored my all in the neighbourhood, but when she starts an affair with a married man she falls from grace in the eyes of those around. Her actions finally have and consequences she cannot control. All in all, it gives the reader an interesting insight into the everyday lives of working class Londoners at the turn of the century. William Somerset Maugham CH ( 25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.