Updated: June 07, 2010

By Christa Fletcher

British novelist William Golding (1911-1993) grew up in Southwest England in Marlborough, a market town in Wiltshire County. Raised to pursue the sciences, because his father was a science teacher at Marlborough Grammar School, Golding couldn't resist his passion to write and was a published author by the time he was 23-years-old.

Over the course of his lifetime he published 12 novels and wrote countless essays, reviews and short stories -- many of which are unpublished from his journal which spans 1971 to his death in 1993. He also wrote a travel book about Egypt. Yet, William Golding is most famous for writing Lord of the Flies and winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.

The award was bestowed to William Golding "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today."

In addition to William Golding's successful writing career, he also served in the Royal Navy during World War II, was married to Ann Brookfield, had two children and was knighted by the Queen of England in 1988.