William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. His mother, Mildred, was an active suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote and his father, Alex, worked as a schoolmaster. Golding received his early education at the school his father ran, Marlborough Grammar School. He went on to attend Brasenose College at Oxford University where he studied English literature.

Eventually, Golding decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and took a position teaching English and Philosophy in 1935. His experiences of teaching unruly young boys would later serve as inspiration for his novel Lord of the Flies.

Golding temporarily abandoned teaching to join the Royal Navy and fight in World War II. He spent the better part of the next six years on a boat and during this time he developed a lifelong romance with sailing and the sea. In 1945, after World War II had ended, Golding went back to teaching and writing.

In 1954, after 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies. Since its publication, the novel has been widely regarded as a classic, worthy of in-depth analysis and discussion in classrooms around the world. Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature and in 1988 he was knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.

On June 19, 1993, Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. Among the most successful novels of Golding’s writing career were Rites of Passage (winner of the 1980 Booker McConnell Prize), Pincher Martin, Free Fall and The Pyramid. While Golding was mainly a novelist, his body of work also includes poetry, plays, essays and short stories.