William Golding

By Tallie

  • Birth

    William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Saint Columba Minor, Cornwall, England. He was raised in a 14th-century house next door to a graveyard. His mother, Mildred, was an active suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote. His father, Alex, worked as a schoolmaster.

  • Published First Book

    After primary school, William went on to attend Brasenose College at Oxford University. His father hoped he would become a scientist, but William opted to study English literature instead. In 1934, a year before he graduated, William published his first work, a book of poetry aptly entitled Poems. The collection was largely overlooked by critics.

  • Started 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. Golding’s experience teaching unruly young boys would later serve as inspiration for his novel Lord of the Flies.

  • Royal Navy

    Although passionate about teaching from day one, in 1940 Golding temporarily abandoned the profession to join the Royal Navy and fight in World War II. 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.

  • Back to Teaching

    Like his teaching experience, Golding’s participation in the war would prove to be fruitful material for his fiction.
    In 1945, after World War II had ended, Golding went back to teaching and writing.

  • 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.

  • The Nobel Prize

    In 1963, the year after Golding retired from teaching, Peter Brook made a film adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel. Two decades later, at the age of 73, Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1988 he was knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.

  • To the Big Screen

    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.

  • Settling Down

    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 (b. 1940) and Judith (b. 1945).

  • Death

    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.
    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. While Golding was mainly a novelist, his body of work also includes poetry, plays, essays and short stories.