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(This entry was updated by Geoffrey Aggeler (University of Utah) from his entry in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 3-35.)
The literary career of John Anthony Burgess Wilson began in Malaya, where he served as an education officer with the British Colonial Service from 1954 until the coming of Malayan independence in 1957. In 1949 he had written a fictional account of his wartime experiences in Gibraltar, but this book, A Vision of Battlements, did not appear until 1965. In a personal interview (30 July 1969), he explained that he began writing fiction during his Malayan years "as a sort of gentlemanly hobby, because I knew there wasn't any money in it." Time for a Tiger, his first published novel, appeared in 1956 under his nom de plume, which consists of his confirmation name, Anthony, and his mother's maiden name. He used a pseudonym because it was regarded as indiscreet for one in his position to publish realistic fictional portrayals of actual events and personalities under one's own name; and besides, as he said, there were "already enough Wilsons writing." Some years later, having observed the Laborite government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, he became even less attached to his surname and considered abandoning it legally.
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