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Lord of the Flies. William Golding. The author. born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. After two years at Oxford he read English literature instead, and became devoted to Anglo-Saxon.
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Lord of the Flies William Golding
The author • born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. • After two years at Oxford he read English literature instead, and became devoted to Anglo-Saxon. • Joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and spent six years afloat, except for seven months in New York and six months helping Lord Cherwell at the Naval Research Establishment. • present off the French coast for the D-Day invasion, and later at the island of Walcheren. After the war he returned to teaching, and began to write again. • After the war he returned to teaching, and began to write again. Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was published in 1954.
In 1980 he won the 'Booker Prize' for his novel Rites of Passage. • He retired from teaching in 1962. After that, he lived in Wiltshire, listing his recreations as music, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek. • William Golding died in 1993. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1983/golding-bio.html
Notes on the novel… • Lord of the Flies, first published in 1954, has sold millions of copies worldwide (more than 25 million in English alone). • It has been translated into all the major languages, and many minority ones (Georgian, Basque, Catalan). It has been adapted for radio, made into two films, dramatized for the stage. • What is more, any gathering of active, unruly children is likely to be described as "like something out of Lord of the Flies". • The power of Golding's tragedy has had such effect that the novel risks being oversimplified by its own legend. But a re-reading of the novel will always sweep one back to the freshness and vividness of the text, the characters remaining real children, and the tragedy continuing to be unbearable.
The book begins following a plane crash that left the pilot dead and a bunch of young boys, aged five to twelve, scattered throughout a tropical island. The boys were being evacuated from England where an atomic war was taking place. When they were escaping, the plane is attacked, and the pilot parachutes away. Ralph meets up with Piggy, and they find a small conch shell. Ralph blows into the conch shell and and the boys assemble at a central point. There are choirboys and boarding school boys. They congregate to elect a leader and decide to start a fire and begin to explore the island.
