The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support a spire of the magnificence demanded by Jocelin, but he believes he has been chosen by God and given a vision to erect a great spire to exalt the town and to bring its people closer to God. The project is carried on against the advice of many, and in particular the warnings of the master builder, Roger Mason. Jocelin, the Dean of the cathedral, directs the construction of a towering spire funded by his aunt, Lady Alison, a mistress of the former King. The typescripts for The Spire, along with a page of handwritten manuscript notes, can now be found in the University of Exeter's Special Collections archive, where they can be used for further research and study. This internal conflict occurred as Golding continued to return corrected typescripts and proofs but, though Golding had been feeling nervous since January, the novel was published on 10 April 1964.
Īfter working on the novel in Greece, a frustrated Golding sent his next draft of The Spire to Monteith in October and was unsatisfied with his writing owing to an 'inner dispute between religion and reason'. However, Golding first had to attend a conference by 'COMES, the European community of writers' and, despite telling Monteith on 27 August that his revisions would be complete in the next ten days, William and Ann Golding went to Greece to meet Peter Green: an ex-journalist who had expatriated to Molyvos. Golding was pleased at the news, and Monteith sent back edits which suggested splitting the novel into chapters by 17 July 1963, Golding reported that he had reworked the first three chapters and was confident he would finish the book over the next fortnight. Īs tended to be the case, Golding's fears were ultimately unnecessary Monteith and Peter du Sautoy liked the typescript but agreed that it required editing. After a lecturing trip to America in February and March 1963, Golding found that he was still struggling to write when he returned, and worried greatly about both the novel's narrative and its relevance to a contemporary audience. Auden and discouraging him from writing his own poetry collection. One reason for his discontent may have been Golding's longstanding 'terror of adverse criticism' as well as his editor, Charles Monteith, repeatedly asking him to co-edit an anthology of modern poetry with W. However, by November he 'confessed that he was in "a state of misery" over the novel'. Golding first wrote fifty to sixty thousand words of a draft in February 1962 over just fourteen days and decided to take a grace period in order to finish the novel for English and American publication by December of the same year. According to his daughter, Judy Carver, Golding 'struggled like anything to write The Spire' and said that the novel 'went through many drafts' this was perhaps owing to the fact that he had stopped teaching which, in turn, gave him more time to write.
Whilst teaching at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Golding regularly looked out of his classroom window at Salisbury Cathedral and wondered how he would possibly construct its spire But the book's composition and eventual realisation of The Spire was not an easy process for Golding. The Spire was envisioned by Golding as a historical novel with a moral struggle at its core, which was originally intended to have two settings: both the Middle Ages and modern day.