Lord of the Flies

As provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, Lord of the Flies continues to ignite passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. William Golding’s compelling story about a group of very ordinary boys marooned on a coral island has been labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, and even a vision of the apocalypse. But above all, it has earned its place as one of the indisputable classics of the twentieth century for readers of any age.

This Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Edition features an array of special features to supplement the novel, including a foreword by Lois Lowry, an introduction by Stephen King, an essay by E. M. Forster, an essay on teaching and reading the novel and suggestions for further exploration by scholar Jennifer Buehler, and an extended note by E. L. Epstein, the publisher of the first American paperback edition of Lord of the Flies.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the Contributors

William Golding (1911– 1993) was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911 and educated at Oxford University. His first book, Poems, was published in 1934. Following a stint in the Royal Navy and other diversions during and after World War II, Golding wrote his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), while teaching school. Many novels followed, including The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), and Free Fall (1959), as well as a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958), and a collection of shorter works, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Darkness Visible (1979) and the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage (1980). In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “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.” He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988. William Golding died in June 1993 and is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, in England.

Lois Lowry is the two-time Newbery Award–winning author of Number the Stars, The Giver Quartet, and numerous other books for young adults.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2015 National Medal of Arts.

Jennifer Buehler is an associate professor of educational studies at Saint Louis University and President of The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English.

E. M. Forster was an English writer best remembered for novels including Passage to India, Howards End, and A Room with a View.

E. L. Epstein was a literary scholar and book editor who published the first American paperback edition of Lord of the Flies in 1959.