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Birth
Sir William Gerard Golding was born in St. Columb Minor, Newquay, Cornwall, England (biography.com). -
Early Life
Living next to a graveyard, his mother was actively involved with fighting for women´s suffrage, and his father was a schoolmaster at Marlborough Grammar School. As a young boy, he often found solace in hurting other children after an unsuccessful attempt at writing a novel when he was 12 (biography.com). -
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College Life
After attending primary school, he began studying at Oxford University, at Brasenose College (biography.com). Because of his father´s wishes, he studied science for two years, but then switched in his third in order to study literature (cliffsnotes.com). A year before his graduation, in 1934, his first work was published, a book called ¨Poems¨ (biography.com). -
Teaching
After college, he began to work at a small theater in an unknown part of London (cliffsnotes.com). After this stint he decided to start teaching. In 1935 he began by teaching at the Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury (biography.com). -
Marriage
Golding married Ann Brookfield in 1939. They had two children, David and Judith (biography.com). -
Royal Navy
He took a six-year hiatus from teaching in 1940, in which time he joined the Royal Navy. He fought in World War II, and was promoted to lieutenant. What he saw in battle helped give birth to the fiction in some of his books (biography.com). -
Lord of the Flies
Golding, after being rejected by 21 different publishers, was finally able to publish his novel, "Lord of the Flies" (biography.com). He used his years of experience with school children and the horrors of the war to write a gripping tale about a group of British school children who crash on an island (cliffsnotes.com). As time wears on, the savage side of the boys is slowly exposed, and they eventually resort to terrible things in order to be able to survive (cliffsnotes.com). -
Novels
Golding wrote other famous novels, including "Rites of Passage" (1980), "Pincher Martin" (1956), "Free Fall" (1959), and "The Pyramid" (1967) (biography.com). His experience in WWII forever changed his beliefs about humanity, and this is reflected in his novels (cliffsnotes.com). He started to abandon his father's belief about how perfect humankind is. (cliffsnotes.com) -
Later Years
Golding retired as a teacher in 1962, at age 51. He was later awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, in 1983. Soon after, in 1988, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, officially gaining the title of Sir William Gerard Golding (biography.com). -
Death
Sir William Gerard Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall at the age of 82. He had spent his last years living with his wife in Falmouth, Cornwall (biography.com)
