Fire Down Below (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: William Golding
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1815
- Setting: The waters south of the Antipodes en route to Sidney Cove, Australia
- Principal Characters: Edmund Talbot, Charles Summers, Benir, Anderson, Aloysius Prettiman, Letitia Granham Prettiman, Marion Chumley
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Voyages, Power, personal or social, Love or romance, Nineteenth century, Class consciousness, England or English people, Sea or seafaring life, Reformers, Australia or Australians
- Locales: Australia, Antipodes
Fire Down Below concludes William Golding’s extraordinary sea trilogy, which began with Rites of Passage (1980) and continued with Close Quarters (1987). The final novel retains the setting and characters of the earlier works, though it modifies their tone. Like the two previous novels, it concerns a group of English emigrants aboard a decrepit sailing ship fitted out as a gunboat of the Royal Navy en route to Australia. The years of the voyage, 1813-1815, coincide with a period of political and social upheaval barely alluded to in the novel but important for...
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