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 2,744,840 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

  • 2.7M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 70.55

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 98

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 8.50

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.23

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, William Golding ranks 284 out of 7,302Before 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.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1911, William Golding ranks 12Before 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 8Before 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

Go to all Rankings

Others Deceased in 1993

Go to all Rankings

In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Golding ranks 197 out of 8,785Before 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).

Among WRITERS In United Kingdom

Among writers born in United Kingdom, William Golding ranks 25Before 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).