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When "Lord of the Flies" appeared in 1954 it received unprecedented reviews for a first novel. Critics used such phrases as "beautifully writeen, tragic and provocative... vivid and enthralling... this beautiful and desperate book... completely convincing and often very frightening... its progress is magnificient... like a fragment of nightmare... a dizzy climax of terror... the terrible spell of this book..." E.M. Forster chose it as the Outstanding Novel of the Year. "Time and Tide" touched upon perhaps the most important facet of this book when it said, "It is not only a first-rate adventure but a parable of our times, " and articles on this and subsequent Golding novels have stressed these twin aspects of Golding: a consummate control of the novel form, and a superb all-encompassing vision of reality which communicates itself with a power reminiscent of Conrad.

William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible. Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.

Published in 1954, William Golding's Lord of the Flies has gained a unique status in the pantheon of 20th-century literature. A cult favorite among both students and literary critics, the novel has been called a parable, an allegory, a myth, even a vision of the apocalypse. Lord of the Flies is an adventure tale in its purest form, a thrilling and elegantly told account of a group of British schoolboys marooned on a tropical island. Alone in a world of uncharted possibilities, devoid of adult supervision or rules, the boys begin to forge their own society, their own rules, their own rituals. With this seemingly romantic premise, through the seemingly innocent acts of children, Golding exposes the duality of human nature itself -- the dark, eternal divide between order and chaos, intellect and instinct, structure and savagery. Golding once described his book as “an attempt to trace the defect of society back to the defect of human nature. ” In Lord of the Flies, he shows us ourselves, at once innocent and corrupt, noble and cruel, and all too human. William Golding was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911. An Oxford graduate, he wrote plays in London before moving to Salisbury to become a teacher. By the time Lord of the Flies was finally accepted for publication in 1954, it had been turned down by more than twenty other publishers. The immediate success of the book allowed Golding to give up teaching, and he went on to publish seven novels, a collection of short stories, and several plays, essays, and articles. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, and he was knighted in 1988.