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William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. He was raised in a 14th-century house next door to a graveyard. His mother, Mildred, fought for women's right to vote. -
William received an early education at Marlborough Grammar School, a school his father ran. When William was 12, he tried to write his own novel, which came out unsuccessfully. As a frustrated child, he enjoyed bullying his peers. Later in life, he would go as far as to say, "I enjoyed hurting people."
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After William went to primary school, he attended Brasenose College at Oxford University. His father wanted him to become a scientist, but William wanted to study English literature instead. In 1934, a year before he graduated, he published his first book titled Poems. The collection was largely overlooked by critics.
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After college, Golding was working in settlement houses and the theater, but only for a time. Eventually, he decided to follow in his dad's footsteps in 1935. William took a position teaching English and philosophy at Wordsworth's School in Salisbury. His experience teaching later inspired his novel, Lord Of The Flies. He was passionate about his job, but he temporarily abandoned it to join the Royal Navy and fight in World War II.
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Golding spent most of his Navy years on a boat, except for a seven-month stay in New York. While in the Royal Navy, he developed a romance with sailing and the sea. During World War II, he fought battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck, and also fended off submarines and planes. 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.
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In 1954, after 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies. Since its publication, the novel has been widely regarded as a classic, worthy of in-depth analysis and discussion in classrooms around the world. -
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). On June 19, 1993, Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall.
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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.