William Gerald Golding was an English novelist, playwright and poet born on September 19, 1911, in Newquay, Cornwall, England. He was best known for the Nobel Prize winning, The Lord of the Flies.
Early life:
William Gerald Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Newquay, Cornwall, England. He tried writing a novel at 12. He grew up in Marlborough, Wiltshire where he received his education from the Marlborough Grammar School where his father, Alec Golding was teaching. Golding began attending Brasenose College at Oxford to study Natural Sciences in 1930 but changed to English Literature in his third year. In 1934, he published a volume of poem, entitled “poems” and graduated a year later with a B.A Degree and a Second Class Honours. (Biography.com, 2015)
Career and Later Years:
After he graduate, Golding worked as a writer, actor, producer, a musician and in a small theatre where he considered his greatest source of influences and inspirations lies. In 1935, he got a job as a schoolmaster, just like his father, at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. Golding married Ann Brookfield, a chemist on 30 September 1939. They had two children, Judith Golding and David Golding. Shortly after, he became a schoolmaster, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and fought in the Second World War. During the war, he witnessed the brutality of human that played a huge influence in his book. Golding has said, “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head” (biography, 2015). After WWII had ended in 1945, Golding reverted back to teaching and writing.
Achievements:
In 1979, he was awarded the ‘James Tait Black Memorial Prize’, the Booker Prize in 1980 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. In 1988, he was knighted and given the title “Sir” by the Queen.
(famousauthors.org, 2015)
The Lord of the Flies:
After 21 rejections from publishers, The Lord of the Flies was published in 1954. (biography, 2015)
"William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first, it seems as though it's all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious & life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic & death. As ordinary standards of behavior collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket & homework & adventure stories—& another world is revealed beneath, primitive & terrible." (Goodreads, 2015)
Other works: (nobleprize.org, 2015)
The Inheritors (novel) 1955
Pincher Martin (novel) 1956
The Brass Butterfly (play) 1958
Free Fall (novel) 1959
The Spire (novel) 1964
The Hot Gates (essays) 1965
The Pyramid (novel) 1967
The Scorpion God (three short novels) 1971
Darkness Visible (novel) 1979
Rites of Passage (novel) 1980
A Moving Target (essays and autobiographical pieces) 1982
The Paper Men (novel) 1984
An Egyptian Journal 1985
Close Quarters (novel) 1987
Fire Down Below (novel) 1989
Death:
On June 19, 1993, he died in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England, at the age of 81. (biography, 2015)
“A heart attack was the probable cause, said Matthew Evans, chairman of Mr. Golding's publisher, Faber and Faber.” (nytimes, 1993)
After 21 rejections from publishers, The Lord of the Flies was published in 1954. (biography, 2015)
"William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first, it seems as though it's all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious & life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic & death. As ordinary standards of behavior collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket & homework & adventure stories—& another world is revealed beneath, primitive & terrible." (Goodreads, 2015)
Other works: (nobleprize.org, 2015)
The Inheritors (novel) 1955
Pincher Martin (novel) 1956
The Brass Butterfly (play) 1958
Free Fall (novel) 1959
The Spire (novel) 1964
The Hot Gates (essays) 1965
The Pyramid (novel) 1967
The Scorpion God (three short novels) 1971
Darkness Visible (novel) 1979
Rites of Passage (novel) 1980
A Moving Target (essays and autobiographical pieces) 1982
The Paper Men (novel) 1984
An Egyptian Journal 1985
Close Quarters (novel) 1987
Fire Down Below (novel) 1989
Death:
On June 19, 1993, he died in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England, at the age of 81. (biography, 2015)
“A heart attack was the probable cause, said Matthew Evans, chairman of Mr. Golding's publisher, Faber and Faber.” (nytimes, 1993)