The Magician (Maugham novel)
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| The Magician | |
| Author | W. Somerset Maugham |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Publication date | 1908 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | NA |
The Magician is an early W. Somerset Maugham novel, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life. Crowley wrote a critique of this book under the pen name Oliver Haddo, where he accused Maugham of plagiarism.
Maugham wrote The magician in London, after he had spent some time living in Paris, where he met Alister Crowley.
The Magician was later republished with a foreword by Maugham entitled A Fragment of Autobiography.
The novel inspired a 1926 Rex Ingram film of the same name, see: The Magician (1926 film).
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[edit] Maugham's comments
Nearly fifty years after the publication of The Magician, the author, Maugham, commented on his book in A Fragment of Autobiography. He writes that by then he had almost completely forgotten the book, and, on rereading it, found the writing "lush and turgid", using more adverbs and adjectives than he would today, and notes that he must have been trying to emulate the "écriture artiste" (artistic writing) of the French writers of the time. He also comments that he must have spent days and days reading in the library of the British Museum to come by all the material on the black arts.
[edit] Allegations of plagiarism
In the 1908 edition of the magazine Vanity Fair Aleister Crowley (under the pen name Oliver Haddo) wrote a critique of The Magician, accusing Maugham of plagiarism. In this critique, named How to Write a Novel! (After W. S. Maugham), Crowley accuses Maugham of having plagiarised the following books in writing The Magician:
- The Island of Dr Moreau, by H. G. Wells
- Kabbalah Unveiled (written by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The translation which was allegedly plagiarized from is by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.
- The Life of Paracelsus by Franz Hartmann.
- Rituel et Dogme de la Haute Magie by Eliphaz Levi, translated by A. E. Waite
- The Blossom and the Fruit, by Mabel Collins
Many years later, Maugham makes a brief comment on this critique in A Fragment of Autobiography, in which he calls Crowley's critique vituperation and intolerably verbose.
[edit] References
- Vanity Fair (magazine), 1908, How to Write a Novel! (After W. S. Maugham) by "Oliver Haddo" (Aleister Crowley)
- A Fragment of Autobiography, W. S. Maugham, included as a foreword in some modern versions of The Magician
