The Moon and Sixpence, is a fictionalized biography of the artist Paul Gauguin. The stand-in character for Gauguin is Charles Strickland, who deserts his wife and children to become a painter. In Paris, he is indifferent to the friendship offered by a fellow artist, Dirk Stroeve. Strickland devastates those around him by running away with Blanche, Stoeve's wife, who has fallen in love with him. In reality, he has no use for Blanche, except as the model for a painting, and upon the painting's completion, abandons her as well.

Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from Spinoza's Ethics

Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself by living a social high life, during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a "brilliant match" for her.