Book description
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group
of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day
they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but
at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast.
As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams
are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour
starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in
1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read
of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational
edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions,
discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of
Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on Lord
of the Flies by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3
and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for
advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages
original and independent thinking while guiding the student through
the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at
Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before he
became a schoolmaster he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor
and a musician. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. In 1940 he
joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, and also took
part in the pursuit of the Bismarck. He finished the war as a Lieutenant
in command of a rocket ship, which was off the French coast for the
D-Day invasion, and later at the island of Walcheren. After the war he
returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and was there when
his first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up
teaching in 1961. Lord of the Flies was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963.
Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and
classical Greek (which he taught himself). Many of these subjects appear
in his essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. He won the
Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at
his home in the summer of 1993. The Double Tongue, a novel left in draft
at his death, was published in June 1995.
