Mary Elizabeth Maugham Paravicini Hope, Baroness Glendevon was the only child of English playwright, novelist, and short story writer W. Somerset Maugham and his then mistress, Syrie Wellcome.
Background
She was known as Liza, after her father"s first successful novel, Liza of Lambeth. Her parents married in 1917, after her mother"s divorce from the British pharmaceuticals magnate Henry Wellcome. Her mother was a daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo.
Career
In his memoir Looking Back (1962), Somerset Maugham denied paternity of Liza. Around the same time, he attempted to have her disinherited in order to adopt his male secretary, suggesting that she was actually the child of Syrie by either Henry Wellcome, Gordon Selfridge or an unknown lover.