Golding, William (Vol. 2) - Golding, William 1911–

Golding, William 1911–

A British novelist, often of cosmic proportions, Golding is best known for Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, and The Spire. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

It hardly seems an accident that Golding began his career as a poet; his first published work was a volume of verse. His novels all develop what for want of a better description we may call the structure of fantasy. They are suspended with considerable uncertainty in space and time; they are all in one way or another parables or fables; and they have become progressively internal and lyrical. Golding's prose is strenuous, compact, angular, extremely oblique and elliptical….

[Golding's novels] are rigorously organized and heavily controlled: they vex the reader with little that is gratuitous. Whatever freedom or spontaneity may be discovered in them resembles the freedom we find in a dramatic poem—it is the result of a...

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