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William Golding

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William Golding
File:William Golding.jpeg
OccupationNovelist
NationalityBritish
Genreallegory, essay
Notable worksLord of the Flies
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
1983
Signature

Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980, for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.

Biography

Early life

William Golding was born in his grandmother's bed, 47 Mountwise, Allington, and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Maidstone, Kent, where his father (Alec Golding) was a science master at Maidstone Grammar School (1905 to retirement). Alec Golding was a socialist with a strong commitment to scientific rationalism, and the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended the school where his father taught. His mother, Mildred, kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and supported the moderate campaigners for female suffrage. In 1930 Golding went to Oxford University as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English Literature.

Golding's biographer John Carey claimed in 2009 that Golding admits in a diary to attempted rape while he was an undergraduate. The victim, whose name was Dora, was known to Golding from when she was 13 and he three years older; the attempted rape occurred two years later, when Golding was home from his first year at Oxford. Following the attempted rape, the pair met again two years later at which point, according to reports, they consummated their relationship. Carey attests that Golding was ashamed of his relationship with Dora, which he - Golding - considered demonstrative of his own "monstrous" character. Carey also relates that Dora achieved a form of revenge, by persuading Golding's father to spy on the pair having sex in the open air: "She wanted to show that his two sons were not exemplary.

Golding took his B.A. (Hons) Second Class in the summer of 1934, and later that year his first book, Poems, was published in London by Macmillan & Co, through the help of his Oxford friend, the anthroposophist Adam Bittleston. Golding was an avid animal rights activist.

Marriage and family

Golding married Ann Brookfield on 30 September 1939 and they had two children, Judy and David.

War service

During World War II, Golding fought in the Royal Navy and was briefly involved in the pursuit and sinking of Germany's mightiest battleship, the Bismarck. He also participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, commanding a landing ship that fired salvoes of rockets onto the beaches, and then in a naval action at Walcheren in which 23 out of 24 assault craft were sunk. At the war's end he returned to teaching and writing.

Death

In 1985 Golding and his wife moved to Tullimaar House at Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall, where he died of heart failure, 8 years later, on 19 June 1993. He was buried in the village churchyard at Bowerchalke, South Wiltshire (near the Hampshire and Dorset county boundaries). He left the draft of a novel, The Double Tongue, set in ancient Delphi, which was published posthumously.

Career

Writing success

In September 1953 Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber of London. Initially rejected by a reader there, the book was championed by Charles Monteith, then a new editor at the firm. He asked for various cuts in the text and the novel was published in September 1954 as Lord of the Flies. It was shortly followed by other novels, including The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and Free Fall.

Publishing success made it possible for Golding to resign his teaching post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in 1961, and he spent that academic year in the United States as writer-in-residence at Hollins College near Roanoke, Virginia. Having moved in 1958 from Salisbury to nearby Bowerchalke, he met his fellow villager and walking companion James Lovelock. The two discussed Lovelock's hypothesis that the living matter of the planet Earth functions like a single organism, and Golding suggested naming this hypothesis after Gaia, the goddess of the earth in Greek mythology.

In 1970 Golding was a candidate for the Chancellorship of the University of Kent at Canterbury, but lost to the politician and leader of the Liberal Party, Jo Grimond. Golding won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1979, the Booker Prize in 1980, and in 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.

Fiction

Golding's often allegorical fiction makes broad use of allusions to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism. No distinct thread unites his novels (unless it be a fundamental pessimism about humanity), and the subject matter and technique vary. However his novels are often set in closed communities such as islands, villages, monasteries, groups of hunter-gatherers, ships at sea or a pharaoh's court. His first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954; film, 1963 and 1990; play, adapted by Nigel Williams, 1995), dealt with an unsuccessful struggle against barbarism and war, thus showing the ambiguity and fragility of civilization. It has also been said that it is an allegory of World War II. The Inheritors (1955) looked back into prehistory, advancing the thesis that humankind's evolutionary ancestors, "the new people" (generally identified with homo sapiens sapiens), triumphed over a gentler race (generally identified with Neanderthals) as much by violence and deceit as by natural superiority. The Spire 1964 follows the building (and near collapse) of a huge spire onto a medieval cathedral church (generally assumed to be Salisbury Cathedral); the church and the spire itself act as a potent symbols both of the dean's highest spiritual aspirations and of his worldly vanities. His 1954 novel Pincher Martin concerns the last moments of a sailor thrown into the north Atlantic after his ship is attacked. The structure is echoed by that of the later Booker Prize winner by Yann Martel, Life of Pi. The 1967 novel The Pyramid comprises three separate stories linked by a common setting (a small English town in the 1920s) and narrator. The Scorpion God (1971) is a volume of three novellas set in a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer band ('Clonk, Clonk'), an ancient Egyptian court ('The Scorpion God') and the court of a Roman emperor ('Envoy Extraordinary'). The last of these is a reworking of his 1958 play The Brass Butterfly.

honey buns are awesome!).

Major works

See also

  • Novels by William Golding
  • John Carey. William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies. London, Faber & Faber. 2009. ISBN 9780571231638
  • John Carey. William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies. New York, Free Press. To be published in the United States by Free Press in June 2010. ISBN 9781439187326

References

  1. ^ Kevin McCarron, ‘Golding, Sir William Gerald (1911–1993)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 13 Nov 2007
  2. (Which should not be confused with Marlborough College, the "public" boarding school).
  3. ^ Brooks, Richard (August 16, 2009). "Author William Golding tried to rape girl, 15". The Times. Retrieved 24 October 2009.
  4. Mortimer, John (1986). Character Parts. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-008959-4.
  5. Golding, William (1996). The Double Tongue. London: Faber. ISBN 9780571178032.
  6. Bruce Lambert (20 June 1993). "William Golding Is Dead at 81; The Author of 'Lord of the Flies'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-06.

External links

Works by William Golding
Recipients of the Booker Prize
1969–79
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature
1901–1920
1921–1940
1941–1960
1961–1980
1981–2000
2001–2020
2021–present

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