WRITER

William Golding

1911 - 1993

Photo of William Golding

Icon of person William Golding

Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William Golding has received more than 2,560,558 page views. His biography is available in 98 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 93 in 2019). William Golding is the 284th most popular writer (down from 266th in 2019), the 197th most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 210th in 2019) and the 25th most popular British Writer.

In 1954, William Golding published his debut novel, Lord of the Flies. The novel tells the story of a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and try to govern themselves, with disastrous results.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.6M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 70.55

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 98

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 8.50

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.23

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The inheritors
1955
Pincher Martin
Airplane crash survival
The sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer is miraculously cast up on a huge, barren rock in mid-Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the night cold, and the terror of his isolation. At the core of this raging tale of physical and psychological violence lies Christopher Martin' s will to live as the sum total of his life.
1956
Free fall
1959
The spire
1964
The brass butterfly
1957
Lord of the Flies
1954

Page views of William Goldings by language

Over the past year William Golding has had the most page views in the with 268,221 views, followed by Russian (44,709), and Spanish (36,979). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Mingrelian (366.15%), Hakka (160.38%), and Malagasy (142.59%)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, William Golding ranks 284 out of 7,302. Before him are Italo Calvino, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Paul Heyse, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Alfonso X of Castile. After him are Alberto Moravia, Paul Valéry, Philip K. Dick, Marcus Terentius Varro, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Emily Dickinson.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1911, William Golding ranks 12. Before him are Naguib Mahfouz, Władysław Szpilman, Emil Cioran, Juan Manuel Fangio, Võ Nguyên Giáp, and Todor Zhivkov. After him are Nino Rota, Czesław Miłosz, Mikhail Botvinnik, Marshall McLuhan, Jack Ruby, and Melvin Calvin. Among people deceased in 1993, William Golding ranks 8. Before him are Audrey Hepburn, Federico Fellini, Ferruccio Lamborghini, Rudolf Nureyev, Baudouin of Belgium, and Erich Hartmann. After him are Frank Zappa, James Hunt, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Turgut Özal, Anthony Burgess, and Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona.

Others Born in 1911

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Others Deceased in 1993

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Golding ranks 197 out of 8,785. Before him are Arthur Henderson (1863), Ken Loach (1936), Pete Townshend (1945), Arnold J. Toynbee (1889), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759), and Charles II of England (1630). After him are James Chadwick (1891), John Wycliffe (1324), Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (1843), Arthur C. Clarke (1917), Henry I of England (1068), and Keith Richards (1943).

Others born in United Kingdom

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Among WRITERS In United Kingdom

Among writers born in United Kingdom, William Golding ranks 25. Before him are William Blake (1757), Anna Wintour (1949), J. K. Rowling (1965), John Milton (1608), Geoffrey Chaucer (1343), and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759). After him are Arthur C. Clarke (1917), Anne Brontë (1820), C. S. Lewis (1898), William Wordsworth (1770), Ken Follett (1949), and Ian Fleming (1908).

British born Writers

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