William Golding

Name: William Golding
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780571374427

by Unknown Author

592 pages2025Faber & Faber, LimitedISBN 9780571374427

About this book

The remarkable literary collaboration between a Nobel Prizewinning novelist and his editor of more than forty years. Three people have been of major importance and influence in my life and you are one of them. There is a way in which I am as a writer at least partly your creation. -- William Golding to Charles Monteith In 1953, William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies was rescued from a 'slush pile' of unsolicited manuscripts by Charles Monteith, a new young editor at the publishing house Faber & Faber. It went on to sell over 25 million copies. Over the next forty years Monteith worked closely with Golding on every one of his novels. These letters tell the story of their remarkable collaboration. They chart Golding's transformation from unknown middle-aged schoolmaster to knighted Nobel Prizewinner, and they tell the story of a deep and mutually rewarding friendship, as 'Dear Monteith' and 'Dear Golding' become 'Dear Charles' and 'Dear Bill'. In this beautifully produced, stitch-bound volume, Tim Kendall draws on both public and private archives to reveal the relationship between one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and his publisher, both men who considered themselves, for different reasons, to be outsiders. Their correspondence sheds fascinating light on both the mysteries of the writing process and the vagaries of the literary world. Generous, amusing, acerbic, intimate and often irreverent, these letters encompass gossip, reading recommendations and stories of Greek island adventures as well as detailed discussion of titles, characters and Golding's dreadful spelling.

Publication Details

Publisher: Faber & Faber, Limited
Published: 2025
Pages: 592
ISBN: 9780571374427
Language: en

About Unknown Author

The winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature, William Golding is among the most popular and influential British authors to have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Golding's reputation rests primarily upon his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), which is consistently regarded as an effective and disturbing portrayal of the fragility of civilization. **Childhood and college years** Golding was born in Saint Columb Minor in Cornwall, England, in 1911. His father, Alex, was a schoolmaster, while his mother, Mildred, was active in the Women's Suffrage Movement (the movement for women's right to vote). As a boy, his favorite authors included H. G. Wells (1866–1946), Jules Verne (1828–1905), and Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950). Since the age of seven, Golding had been writing stories, and at the age of twelve he attempted to write a novel. Golding remained an enthusiastic writer and, upon entering Brasenose College of Oxford University, abandoned his plans to study science, preferring to read English literature. At twenty-two, a year before taking his degree in English, Golding saw his first literary work published—a poetry collection simply titled Poems. After graduating from Oxford in 1935, Golding continued the family tradition by becoming a schoolmaster in Salisbury, Wiltshire. His teaching career was interrupted in 1940, however, with the outbreak of World War II (1939–45). Lieutenant Golding served five years in the British Royal Navy and saw active duty in the North Atlantic, commanding a rocket launching craft. **Lord of the Flies** Golding had enhanced his knowledge of Greek history and mythology by reading while at sea, and when he returned to his post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in 1945, he began furthering his writing career. He wrote three novels, all of which went unpublished. But his frustration would not last long, when, in 1954, Golding created The Lord of the Flies. The novel was rejected by twenty-one publis