William Golding was born at St. Columb Minor, Cornwall, on September 19, 1911. His father, Alec Golding, the Senior Assistant Master at the Marlboro Grammar School, specialized in science and wrote textbooks (on chemistry, botany, zoology, physics, and geography). Golding himself attended the Marlboro School, then studied in science at Brasenose College, Oxford. After graduation, Golding became a settlement-house worker while composing plays and acting. In 1939, having wed Ann Brookfield, he began teaching English and philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. His career there was short term; by the following year, he had enlisted in the Royal Navy. Golding served in the navy for five years during World War II. His first published novel, Lord of the Flies, manifests his disillusionment with human nature—a result, in large part, of his experience in World War II. Continuing to focus on violence and evil, Golding went on to write The Inheritors (1955; about prehistoric inhabitants), Pincher Martin (1956; about a drowned sailor), and eight more novels (from Free Fall, 1959, to The Paper Men, 1984), establishing “a rhythm of contrasted seastories and land-stories all of which are concerned with extremity and isolation” (Sanders, p.
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