Background
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911 in Newquay, Cornwall, England. He was the second son of Alec Golding and Mildred (Curnoe) Golding.
1957
William Golding
1963
Golding, Artur Lundkvist and Jean-Paul Sartre at a writers' congress in Leningrad, USSR.
1964
Author William Golding relaxing at home.
Radcliffe Sq, Oxford OX1 4AJ, United Kingdom
Brasenose College, where Golding was educated.
William Golding
William Golding receives the Nobel Prize in Literature from King Carl Gustaf.
Geneticist and biologist Barbara McClintock, winner of the 1983 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine, and novelist William Golding, winner of the 1983 Nobel prize for literature, at Stockholm.
William Golding on April 28, 1982.
Close up of 1983 a British author William Golding at his Wiltshire home, England.
William Golding with his family.
William Golding working at home.
William Golding with his daughter.
William Golding with his book Rites of Passage.
Exeter St, Salisbury SP1 2ED, United Kingdom
Plaque at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury.
The Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire that William Golding received in 1988.
(At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an ...)
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OCXIRG/?tag=2022091-20
1954
(From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors is a...)
From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors is a startling recreation of the lost world of the Neanderthals, and a frightening vision of the beginning of a new age.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KOGVQ6/?tag=2022091-20
1955
(Drowning in the freezing North Atlantic, Christopher Hadl...)
Drowning in the freezing North Atlantic, Christopher Hadley Martin, temporary lieutenant, happens upon a grotesque rock, an island that appears only on weather charts. To drink there is a pool of rain water; to eat there are weeds and sea anemones. Through the long hours with only himself to talk to, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate, piece by terrible piece.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CW0JFYS/?tag=2022091-20
1956
(The Brass Butterfly was Golding's only original stage pla...)
The Brass Butterfly was Golding's only original stage play. Starring Sim himself, and also the popular actor George Cole, it opened for a provincial pre-West End run in Oxford in early 1958 and premiered at the Strand Theatre in London in April. In his biography of Golding, John Carey describes it as "a comic scherzo" dealing with the conflict between science and religion, transposed to the Greco-Roman world of antiquity.
https://www.amazon.com/Brass-Butterfly-Play-William-Golding-ebook/dp/B00MLD1EOU
1957
(Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure...)
Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell like Lazarus from the tomb, seeing infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Transfigured by his ordeal, he begins to realize what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. He determines to find the exact point at which the accumulated weight of those choices has deprived him of free will.
https://www.amazon.com/Sir-William-Golding/dp/0544310519/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
1959
(Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to ere...)
Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral. His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.
https://www.amazon.com/Spire-William-Golding/dp/0156027828/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
1964
(The Hot Gates is the title of a collection of essays by W...)
The Hot Gates is the title of a collection of essays by William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies. The collection is divided into four sections: "People and Places", "Books", "Westward Look" and "Caught in a Bush".
https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Gates-William-Golding/dp/0571133665
1965
(Oliver is eighteen and wants to enjoy himself before goin...)
Oliver is eighteen and wants to enjoy himself before going to university. But this is the 1920s and he lives in Stilbourne, a small English country town where everyone knows what everyone else is getting up to, and where love, lust and rebellion are closely followed by revenge and embarrassment.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CW0JGGA/?tag=2022091-20
1967
(The three short novels in this collection, The Scorpion G...)
The three short novels in this collection, The Scorpion God, show Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best. In The Scorpion God we see the world of ancient Egypt at the time of the earliest Pharaohs. Clonk Clonk is a graphic account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. And Envoy Extraordinary is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own arrogant, loutish heir.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BKRV3W6/?tag=2022091-20
1971
(At the height of the London blitz, a naked child steps ou...)
At the height of the London blitz, a naked child steps out of an all-consuming fire. Miraculously saved yet hideously scarred, tormented at school and at work, Matty becomes a wanderer, a seeker after some unknown redemption. Two more lost children await him: twins as exquisite as they are loveless. Toni dabbles in political violence, Sophy in sexual tyranny. As Golding weaves their destinies together, as he draws them toward a final conflagration, his book lights up both the inner and outer darknesses of our time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F21V7AY/?tag=2022091-20
1979
(Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth...)
Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, stinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped spaces below decks. Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a hell of degradation, where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself.
https://www.amazon.com/Rites-Passage-Novel-Ends-Earth/dp/0374526400
1980
(A Moving Target is a collection of essays and lectures wr...)
A Moving Target is a collection of essays and lectures written by William Golding. It was first published in 1982 by Faber and Faber but subsequent reprints included Golding's Nobel Prize lecture which he gave after being awarded the honour in 1983.
https://www.amazon.com/Moving-Target-Winner-Nobel-Literature/dp/0374518505/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
1982
(English novelist Wilfred Barclay, who has known fame, suc...)
English novelist Wilfred Barclay, who has known fame, success, and fortune, is in crisis. He faces a drinking problem slipping over the borderline into alcoholism, a dead marriage, and the incurable itch of middle age lust. But the final, unbearable irritation is American Professor of English Literature Rick L. Tucker, who is implacable in his determinition to become The Barclay Man: authorized biographer, editor of the posthumous papers and the recognized authority.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F21V7F4/?tag=2022091-20
1984
(William Golding's interest in ancient Egypt has previousl...)
William Golding's interest in ancient Egypt has previously been expressed in two essays, and in the novella "The Scorpion God". This account covers his journey down the Nile in today's Egypt. He recalls his trip honestly and humorously, and shares his feelings about Egypt past and present.
https://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Journal-William-Golding/dp/0571125476
1985
(The second volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy In a w...)
The second volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. The sequel to Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, the second volume in Golding's acclaimed sea trilogy, is imbued with his extraordinary sense of menace. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is going to pieces. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G8NYP36/?tag=2022091-20
1987
(The final part of Golding's Sea Trilogy. A decrepit man-o...)
The final part of Golding's Sea Trilogy. A decrepit man-of-war is on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney, blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. After a risky operation to reset its foremast with red-hot metal, an unseen fire is smouldering below decks.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ5K344/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(This extraordinary short novel, left in draft at the auth...)
This extraordinary short novel, left in draft at the author's death in 1993, is a psychological and historical triumph. Golding has created a vivid and comic picture of ancient Greek society as well as an absolutely convincing portrait of a woman's experience, something rare in the Golding oeuvre. Arieka the Pythia is one of his finest creations.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374526370/?tag=2022091-20
1995
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911 in Newquay, Cornwall, England. He was the second son of Alec Golding and Mildred (Curnoe) Golding.
Golding attended Marlborough Grammar School (nowadays Marlborough Royal Free Grammar School). In 1930, he enrolled in Brasenose College, where he began studying Natural Sciences and in 1932, he changed his training program focusing on the study of literature and in-depth learning of the English language. In 1934, William received his Bachelor of Arts degree with Second Class Honours.
Golding began his career in 1935, working in a settlement house and in small theatre companies, and exploring himself as an actor and a writer. In 1938, he took a position of a schoolmaster teaching English and Music at Maidstone Grammar School. Two years later William joined the Royal Navy and spent six years afloat, except for seven months in New York and six months helping Lord Cherwell at the Naval Research Establishment. He saw action against battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck, submarines and aircraft, commanding a rocket-launching craft. William finished his service as a lieutenant in command of a rocket ship. Following the war Golding continued to teach and to write fiction. In 1945, after World War II had ended, he became a teacher of English at Bishop Wordsworth's School and held it for sixteen years.
At the beginning of his writing career, William Golding wrote four novels, but none of them was accepted for publishing. His fifth novel was the Lord of the Flies. In 1954, after facing at least 21 rejections from publishing companies all over England, a new editor at the Faber & Faber decided to publish it. The novel was based on his experiences that he gathered from working with the army in the adversity of the war. In 1955, he got another novel published with the name of The Inheritors. At the beginning of the 1960s, Golding stopped teaching and completely devoted himself to writing. In a couple of years he published The Spire.
From 1980-1989, The Sea Trilogy was published. It comprised of three full-length novels, Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down Below. Throughout the 1980s Golding's novels, essays, and the travel journal An Egyptian Journal have received general praise from commentators. In 1990, a film adaptation of Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies came out. It was the second film adaptation of the novel – the first one was made in the 1960s by Peter Brook.
In 1992, Golding found out that he suffered from malignant melanoma. At the end of December, the tumor was removed, but it became clear that the writer's health had been damaged. In early 1993, he began working on a new book, which he had not had time to complete. After Golding’s death, his novel The Double Tongue was published.
(From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors is a...)
1955(Drowning in the freezing North Atlantic, Christopher Hadl...)
1956(The second volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy In a w...)
1987(Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth...)
1980(William Golding's interest in ancient Egypt has previousl...)
1985(This extraordinary short novel, left in draft at the auth...)
1995(The three short novels in this collection, The Scorpion G...)
1971(Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure...)
1959(At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an ...)
1954(The Hot Gates is the title of a collection of essays by W...)
1965(Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to ere...)
1964(English novelist Wilfred Barclay, who has known fame, suc...)
1984(At the height of the London blitz, a naked child steps ou...)
1979(A Moving Target is a collection of essays and lectures wr...)
1982(Oliver is eighteen and wants to enjoy himself before goin...)
1967(The Brass Butterfly was Golding's only original stage pla...)
1957(The final part of Golding's Sea Trilogy. A decrepit man-o...)
1989While his father had been an insistent atheist, Golding himself was a Christian, though a member of no established Church. He said that he felt a constant struggle in himself between religiosity and rationality, myths and science. Golding also used religious themes in his works.
William Golding considered it pointless to write books that resemble each other. Despite the fact that the key themes in his books repeat over and over again, each of Golding’s novels describes them from different points of view. The main themes are connected with religion and philosophy: how human nature gravitates to evil, how natural evil is for human behavior, the gap between progress and morals, the necessity to understand the "dark" parts of one’s psycho. His famous novel Lord of the Flies focuses on the instincts for self-preservation and the underlying human potential for savagery and cruelty.
All Golding’s novels are filled with themes that explore the absurdity of war and comment on the inherent evil that plagues the human race. He used his experience during World War II to shape his literary discourse, and his books remain to be extremely influential. Golding noted that man suffers from a monstrous ignorance of his own nature. He also said that he devoted his entire creativity to solving the problem of meaning of the human being. He also recognized his commitment to mythology and said that a myth is the key to existence, revealing the ultimate meaning of being and absorbing life experience in its entirety.
Quotations:
"We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other."
"We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement."
"The greatest pleasure is not – say – sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity – well, that's the job of the writer."
"Childhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of."
"The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth."
"I don’t like the word "allegorical", I don’t like the word "symbolic", the word I really like is "mythic" and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story."
Golding was a member of the Royal Society of Literature.
Golding was of a reclusive nature and did not give many interviews to the media and always restrained from getting any biography published on himself. It was after his death that John Carey came up with his only biography called William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies.
As a child, William Golding was a timid, super-sensitive and shy. He had conflicts at school and his desire for literary success was largely motivated by a thirst for revenge. Golding hated snobbism and carried this hatred through his whole life. As John Cary noted that there was a dark side in the character of the writer, the origins of which remained unclear. The writer also was afraid of heights, injections, crustaceans, insects and everything that crawled.
Quotes from others about the person
Stephen King: "I was … unprepared for what I found between the covers of Lord of the Flies: a perfect understanding of the sort of beings I and my friends were at twelve or thirteen, untouched by the usual softsoap and deodorant. Could we be good? Yes. Could we be kind? Yes again. Could we, at the turn of a moment, become little monsters? Indeed we could. And did. At least twice a day and far more frequently on summer vacations, when we were often left to our own devices. Golding harnessed his unsentimental view of boyhood to a story of adventure and swiftly mounting suspense."
William Golding married Ann Brookfield on 30 September 1939. The marriage produced a son and a daughter.