Golding, Sir William (Gerald)

(born Sept. 19, 1911, St. Columb Minor, near Newquay, Cornwall, Eng.—died June 19, 1993, Perranarworthal, near Falmouth, Cornwall) British novelist.

Educated at the University of Oxford, Golding worked as a schoolmaster until 1960. His first and best-known novel was Lord of the Flies (1954; film, 1963, 1990), about a group of boys isolated on an island who revert to savagery. Later works, several of which are likewise parables of the human condition that show the thinness of the veneer of civilization, include The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), The Spire (1964), Rites of Passage (1980, Booker Prize), and Close Quarters (1987). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.