William Somerset Maugham (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. Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East. They typically express the emotional toll the colonists bear by their isolation. 'Rain', 'Footprints in the Jungle', and 'The Outstation' are considered especially notable. Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include 'The Gentleman in the Parlour', dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and 'On a Chinese Screen', a series of very brief vignettes that might have been sketches for stories left unwritten.