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Birth
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, 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. -
Teaching
After college, Golding worked in settlement houses and the theater for a time. Eventually, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. In 1935 Golding took a position teaching English and philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. -
Family
Marriage. William Golding met his future wife, Anne Brookfield, in 1938. After a brief courtship, they married in 1939, the same year he began teaching English and Philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth's school. Anne and Golding had two children; the first, David, born in 1940; and a daughter, Judith, born in 1945. -
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. -
Royal navy
Golding spent the better part of the next six years on a boat, except for a seven-month stint in New York, where he assisted Lord Cherwell at the Naval Research Establishment. While in the Royal Navy, Golding developed a lifelong romance with sailing and the sea. During World War II, he fought battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck and fended off submarines and planes. Lieutenant Golding was even placed in command of a rocket-launching craft. -
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. -
"The lord of the flies"
In 1954, after 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies. The novel told the gripping story of a group of adolescent boys stranded on a deserted island after a plane wreck. Lord of the Flies explored the savage side of human nature as the boys, let loose from the constraints of society, brutally turned against one another in the face of an imagined enemy. -
Other work,and Honors and Awards
Following the publication of his best-known work, Lord of the Flies, Golding was granted membership in the Royal Society of Literature in 1955. Ten years later, he received the honorary designation Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and was knighted in 1988. His 1980 novel Rites of Passage won the Booker Prize, a prestigious British award. Golding's greatest honor was being awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature. -
Death and legacy
Golding spent the last few years of his life quietly living with his wife, Ann Brookfield, at their house near Falmouth, Cornwall, where he continued to toil at his writing. The couple married in 1939 and had two children, David (b. 1940) and Judith (b. 1945).On June 19, 1993, Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. After Golding died, his completed manuscript for The Double Tongue was published posthumously.