It is told in episodic form by a first-person narrator providing a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist.

He lives a destitute but defiantly contented life there as a painter, lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both illness and hunger.

Strickland, in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess and compel him on the inside, cares nothing for physical discomfort and is indifferent to his surroundings.

Maugham took inspiration from the published writings about Gauguin available at the time, as well as personal experience living among the artistic community in Paris in 1904, and a visit to Tahiti in 1914.

Writing in 1953, Maugham described the idea for the book as arising during a year that he spent living in Paris in 1904: "...I met men who had known him and worked with him at Pont-Aven.

"[1] The idea remained in his mind for ten years, until a visit to Tahiti in 1914, where Maugham was able to meet people who had known Gauguin, inspired him to start writing.

Dickson sums up the novel as follows: "Maugham was fascinated by the impact of the arrival of modernism from Europe on an insular British consciousness and the emergence of the cult of the modernist artist-genius—The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satire of Edwardian mores and a Gauguin biography.

The novel served as the basis for a 1957 opera, also titled The Moon and Sixpence, by John Gardner to a libretto by Patrick Terry which premiered at Sadlers Wells.

[citation needed] The Moon and Sixpence is central to the protagonist's solving the mystery in the Howard Pease novel The Ship Without a Crew (1934).

[citation needed] In the opening scene of François Truffaut's film Fahrenheit 451 (1966), an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel of the same name, several firemen are preparing books for burning.

[citation needed] The book (with its title visible) is handed to Major Gale "Buck" Cleven in episode eight of the 2024 series Masters of the Air.