Sir William Golding
‘Lord of the Flies’ was written by Sir William Golding (1911-93) in 1952 and was eventually published in 1954. It was the most successful of his 13 novels and has been studied in detail for its astounding depiction of the inner savagery and tribalism of humans, seemingly barely held at bay in some individuals. Golding was somewhat surprised by its popularity and regarded some of his other books more highly, such as ‘The Inheritors’ (1955) and ‘The Spire’ (1964).
Golding was born in Cornwall but grew up in Wiltshire, returning to Cornwall in his last years. The topics of his writing came from his experiences as a non-private-school student at Oxford, a short attempt at entertainment, then as a teacher of Philosophy, Greek and English from 1937 to 1962, by which time his literary status was assured. He also saw action in the Royal Navy during WW2.
Golding liked thought-provoking, shock endings to his stories and critics have described them as pessimistic, but he viewed himself as a “cosmic optimist” since there always seem to be some who rise above the surrounding destruction. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1980 for that year’s ‘Rites of Passage’ and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983 for “…illuminat[ing] the human condition…”.
(Images LtoR: Dutch National Archives at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0, Alaina Buzas at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)