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Growing up
His father, Alec, was a schoolteacher and an ardent advocate of rationalism, the idea that reason rather than experience is a necessary and reliable means through which to gain knowledge and understand the world.Alec's anti-religious devotion to reason was the legacy of such scientific rationalists as T.H. Huxley and H.G. Wells. His father wielded a tremendous influence over him, and, in fact, until leaving for college, Golding attended the school where his father taught. -
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Early Life, September 19, 1911
He was born in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. raised in a 14-century house next door to a graveyard .Hes mother, Mildred was active suffrage who fought woman's right to vote. -
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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.In 1935, he graduated from Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a diploma in education. -
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teaching
After college, Goldens worked in a settlement house and theater. In 1935, took a position teaching english and philosophy Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury .Golding’s experience teaching unruly young boys would later serve as inspiration for his novel Lord of the Flies. -
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career and years later
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.In 1939, Golding began teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury at Bishop Wordsworth's School.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. -
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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 had married in 1939 and had two children, David and Judith .After Golding died from a heart attack, his completed manuscript for The Double Tongue was published posthumously. -
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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.During World War II, he fought battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck.In 1945, after World War II had ended, Golding went back to teaching and writing. -
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Williams Golding 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.In Lord of the Flies, which was published in 1954, Golding combined that perception of humanity with his years of experience with schoolboys.Golding uses a pristine tropical island as a protected environment in which a group of marooned British schoolboys act out their worst impulses. -
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Lords of the flies
In 1954, after 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies.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.In 1963, the year after Golding retired from teaching, Peter Brook made a film adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel. -
The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels
Each story explores the negative repercussions of technological progress — an idea that was in sharp contrast to the technology worship of the space age.One of the novellas had been originally published in 1956; Golding then turned the story into a comedic play titled The Brass Butterfly, which was first performed in London in 1958.