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Date of Birth
English novelist William Golding was born on September 19, 1911. He was born in Saint Columb Minor Cornwall. He was born to Mildred an active suffragette and Alex who worked as a schoolmaster.
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College
After Primary School, William went on to attend Brasenose College at Oxford University. His father hoped he would become a scientist, but William decided to study English literature instead. In 1934, a year before he graduated, William decided to publish his first work, a book of poetry titled Poems.
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Career
He graduated college in 1935 with a Bachelors degree of Arts in English and a diploma in education. From 1935-1939 he worked as a writer, actor, and producer with a small theater in an unfashionable part of London. From Brasenose College at Oxford University.
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Teaching Career
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.
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Serving the Royal Navy
In 1940 Golding abandoned his profession to join the Royal Navy from 1940-1945. In which he fought in World War II. Like his teaching experience, Golding’s participation in the war would prove to be fruitful material for his fiction.
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Lord of the Flies
In 1945, after World War II Golding went back to teaching and writing. Although not the first novel he wrote, Lord of the Flies was the first to be published after having been rejected by 21 publishers. Finally in 1954 was published. An examination of the savagery and civilization in humanity, Golding used a tropical island as a protected environment in which a group of British schoolboys act out their worst impulses.
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The Inheritors
In 1955 he published the Inheritors. A depiction of how the violent, deceitful homo sapiens achieved victory over the gentle Neanderthals.
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Publication of Pincher Martin
In 1956 Pincher Martin followed. Similarly to Lord of the Flies, it concerns survival after shipwreck. Also conveying the savagery and struggle for survival depicted in World War II.
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Free Fall
in 1959 he published Free Fall. The story is told in first person narrator. The novel uses characters to comment on the conflict between rationalism and faith,
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Lord of the Flies movie
In 1963, the year after Golding retired from teaching, Peter Brook made a film adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel the Lord of the Flies.
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The Spire
Issues of faith are addressed in The Spire as well. A fourteenth-century Dean of Barchester Cathedral decides that God wants a 400-foot-high spire added to the top of a cathedral, although the cathedral's foundation is not good enough to hold the weight of the spire.
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The Pyramid
The Pyramid provides an examination of English social class within a town named Stillbourne. The novel utilizes the same structure as the musical form sonata.
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Darkness Visible
His next novel appeared in 1979 called Darkness Visible. It addressed the interdependence of good and evil, exemplified in the two main characters who plot to kidnap a child for ransom.
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Rites of Passage
One of Golding's most ambitious works is The Sea Trilogy, three full-length novels that follow the emotional education and moral growth of an aristocratic young man Rites of Passage shows spiritual growth. Rites of Passage won the 1980 Booker McConnell Prize.
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Nobel Prize in Literature
In 1983 Golding was awarded the 1983 Noble Prize in Literature. Which he found to be his greatest honor.
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Commander of British Empire
Golding received the honorary designation Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and was knighted in 1988. He was knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.
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New Version of the Lord of the Flies
In 1990 a new film version of the Lord of the Flies was released, bringing the book to the attention of a new generation of readers.
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Date of Death
On June 19, 1993 William Golding passed away due to a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. After passing, his manuscript for the double tongue was published.
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Legacy
Among the most successful novels of Golding’s writing career were Rites of Passage (winner of the 1980 Booker McConnell Prize), Pincher Martin, Free Fall and The Pyramid. But most importantly Lord of the Flies.
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