-
Early life
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911 in Saint Columb Minor Cornwall England. He was raised in a 14th-century house next door to a graveyard. His mother Mildred was an active suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote. His father Alex worked as a schoolmaster. -
William Golding
William Golding was born September 19, 1911 in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. In 1935 he started teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury. He temporarily left teaching in 1940 to join the Royal Navy. In 1954 he published his first novel, Lord of the Flies. In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On June 19, 1993 he died in Perranarworthal Cornwall England. -
Education
Golding began attending Brasenose College at Oxford in 1930 and spent two years studying science, in deference to his father's beliefs. In his third year, however, he switched to the literature program, following his true interests. Although his ultimate medium was fiction, from an early age, Golding dreamed of writing poetry. He began reading Tennyson at age seven and steeped himself in Shakespeare's work. -
Career and Later Years
From 1935 to 1939, Golding worked as a writer, actor, and producer with a small theater in an unfashionable part of London, paying his bills with a job as a social worker. He considered the theater his strongest literary influence, citing Greek tragedians and Shakespeare, rather than other novelists, as his primary influences. -
Career and Later Years Cont.
In 1939, Golding began teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury at Bishop Wordsworth's School. That same year, he married Ann Brookfield, with whom he had two children. With the exception of five years he spent in the Royal Navy during World War II, he remained in the teaching position until 1961 when he left Bishop Wordsworth's School to write full time. -
William Golding's Novels
The five years Golding spent in the navy (from 1940 to 1945) made an enormous impact, exposing him to the incredible cruelty and barbarity of which humankind is capable. Writing about his wartime experiences later, he asserted that "man produces evil, as a bee produces honey." Long before, while in college, he had lost faith in the rationalism of his father with its attendant belief in the perfectibility of humankind. -
William Golding's Novels Cont.
In Lord of the Flies, which was published in 1954, Golding combined that perception of humanity with his years of experience with schoolboys. Although not the first novel he wrote, Lord of the Flies was the first to be published after having been rejected by 21 publishers. An examination of the duality of savagery and civilization in humanity, Golding uses a pristine tropical island as a protected environment in which a group of marooned British schoolboys act out their worst impulses. -
Film adaptation of "Lord of the Flies" was made
The first film adaptation of Golding's book, "Lord of the Flies" is made by film producer, Peter Brook. This happened a year after Golding had retired from teaching. -
Won an award in literature
In 1983, at the age of 73, Golding won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. This showed just how influential his novel was. -
Death
William Golding died in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England. His cause of death was congestive heart failure at the age of 81.