Lord of the Flies

Lore & Background

Golding got the idea from The Coral Island, a children's adventure novel with a focus on Christianity and the supposed civilising influence of British colonialism. Golding thought that book unrealistic and asked his wife whether it would be a good idea if he wrote a book about children on an island who behave in the way children really would behave. After the war, the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation led Golding to examine the nature of humanity, inspiring Lord of the Flies.

Reader's Guide

Lord of the Flies was rejected by many publishers before being accepted by Faber & Faber. An initial rejection labeled the book as 'absurd... Rubbish & dull'. The draft was titled Strangers from Within, considered 'too abstract and too explicit'. Golding chose Lord of the Flies as the title, a literal translation of Beelzebub, a biblical demon. Editor Charles Monteith worked on major edits, including removing the entire first section describing an evacuation from nuclear war and heavily editing the character of Simon. Golding accepted the edits, writing that he had lost objectivity over the novel. The edited manuscripts are available at the University of Exeter library. The novel subverts colonial narratives found in British books of the period, such as The Coral Island, and explores the duality of human nature through themes of morality, civility, leadership, and the potential for rapid degeneration into chaos.

Did You Know?

• The novel's title is a literal translation of Beelzebub, a biblical demon.
• The draft of the book was titled Strangers from Within.
• Editor Charles Monteith removed the entire first section describing an evacuation from nuclear war.
• The edited manuscripts are available to view at the University of Exeter library.

The Making of a Novelist

R. M. Ballantyne grew up in Edinburgh as the youngest of ten children, educated mainly by his mother and sisters before a brief period at Edinburgh Academy. At sixteen he went to Canada, spending five years trading furs with First Nations peoples for the Hudson's Bay Company. He later credited the long letters he wrote to his mother during that time as the origin of his writing ability. The Coral Island, his second novel, was written in a seafront house at Burntisland on the Firth of Forth. Having never visited the South Pacific, he relied on secondhand accounts, embellishing them with what he described as theatrical violence to thrill young readers. His ignorance produced a well-known blunder—portraying coconuts as soft and easy to open—which led him to vow he would write only from personal experience. Modern scholars have also identified extensive borrowing from James F.

A Founding Text of Boys' Adventure Fiction

The Coral Island arrived during what is often called the first golden age of children's fiction, and it helped establish a template that remains standard in the genre: a story told from the perspective of boys, for boys. Literary critic Minnie Singh identifies this 'congruence of subject and implied reader' as the novel's founding contribution, preserving the moralizing impulse of didactic literature while making it feel natural to its young audience. The book is a classic Robinsonade in the tradition of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and among its central concerns are the civilising power of Christianity, the hierarchies of leadership, and the imperial outlook of nineteenth-century Britain in the South Pacific. Frank Kermode argued the novel could serve as a document in the history of ideas, while professor John Rennie Short emphasised Ballantyne's deep religious conviction and his sense of duty to instil codes of honour, decency, and religiosity in Victorian middle-class boys.

Publication, Profit, and a Bitter Copyright Dispute

It was issued by T. Nelson & Sons, who, like many publishers of the era, purchased the copyright outright rather than paying royalties. Ballantyne received a lump sum of between fifty and sixty pounds. As the novel's popularity grew and editions multiplied, he attempted to buy back his rights but was refused. Despite this commercial frustration, the book has never gone out of print.

Influence, Reassessment, and Enduring Presence

For much of the twentieth century the book occupied a secure place in British primary schools and on American high-school reading lists. Yet modern critics such as Joseph Bristow and Brian Street have challenged its worldview as dated and imperialist, reflecting the assumptions of a Victorian empire that no longer holds moral authority. Despite this critical re-evaluation, the story has not disappeared.