Little Wilson and Big God

Little Wilson and Big God, the first part of Anthony Burgess’s two-volume autobiography, tells the story of a disaffected Manchester Catholic from his birth in 1917 up to the commencement, in 1959, of his career as a professional writer. Born Jack Wilson, the son of Catholic Irish and Lancashire parents, Burgess grew up in one of the toughest areas of Manchester, with a burgeoning awareness of an artistic talent which for a long time could not find its proper outlet. It deals also with an unending struggle to reconcile a Catholic conscience with the prematurely discovered pleasures of sex. It details his tempestuous first marriage, an army career more comic than heroic, and his years as an education officer in Malaya and Borneo. It was in the Far East, at the age of thirty-seven, his marriage in trouble, drinking heavily, that Burgess began to write the first of the novels that were to make his name.

Author Biography

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He served in the British army from 1940 to 1946 and was a schoolteacher in England before becoming a colonial education officer in 1954. His Malayan trilogy of novels and a history of English literature were published while he was living in Malaya and Brunei.

He became a full-time writer in 1959 and achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the most versatile novelists of his day. His writings include biographies of Shakespeare and Hemingway, critical studies of James Joyce, stage plays, and two volumes of autobiography. His work as a composer and librettist includes the Broadway musical, Cyrano, and Blooms of Dublin, an operetta based on Joyce’s Ulysses.

His 33 novels continue to be published all over the world. They include A Clockwork Orange, Nothing Like the Sun, The Complete Enderby, Earthly Powers, Napoleon Symphony, and Beard’s Roman Women, a collaboration with the photographer David Robinson.

Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993.