William Golding was a British poet and novelist, best known for his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. Born in Cornwall, England in 1911, Golding enjoyed a comfortable middle class upbringing and developed an interest in science at an early age. It wasn’t until his third year at the University of Oxford that his academic passions shifted toward literature, publishing his first collection of poems in 1934 soon after graduating. After a brief stint as a member of the Royal Navy in World War II, Golding continued to write while holding various teaching positions over the next several decades, with his early interest in science influencing much of his work’s content.

In 1954, he finally published his debut novel, Lord of the Flies, which follows a group of young boys stranded on a remote island as their dynamic descends into lawlessness and chaos. Despite initially modest sales, Lord of the Flies was met with widespread critical acclaim, quickly establishing Golding as a major name in the literary world. Despite frequently struggling with alcoholism and severe writer’s block, Golding published another twelve novels during his lifetime, most of which were met with both commercial and critical success and garnered him a number of prestigious awards. His 1980 novel Rites of Passage earned him the Booker Prize, in 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1988 he was knighted in recognition of his contributions to literature. Continuing to write well into his later years, Golding died in 1993 at the age of 81.