A Clockwork Orange Essay, Research Paper

Anthony Burgess

John Anthony Burgess Wilson was an English novelist and critic. He was born in a small house in Harpurhey and was the son of a bookkeeper and part-time pianist. He was found lying in his cot when he was a baby with his mother and sister dead beside him. They were said to have been victims of the Spanish Flu. Anthony attended the Bishop Bilsborrow- Primary School, Moss Side, Xavier College and lastly Manchester University. He then spent six years as a wartime soldier and after he went into education, he became an education officer in Malaya and Brunei. In 1959 he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, so he became a professional writer, hoping to provide for his wife. The diagnoses turned out to be wrong; however, he decided to stick with it and he wrote over thirty novels.

Anthony Burgess was a very well-rounded artist. He drew, wrote novels, was a musician and produced a lot of works. At the age of twelve, his drawings were being accepted by national newspapers and at fourteen, he taught himself to play the piano and compose music. He wrote two symphonies, concertos, songs, sonatas and incidental music for plays. In his very first year he wrote five novels, a couple of plays and several radio scripts and stories. He had all sorts of different topics, themes and styles. Of all his writings, the most well-known was and still is A Clockwork Orange. It is also his most controversial work. A Clockwork Orange was his eighth novel and was published in 1962. Although this was among his best works, he had his own thoughts on it. In an interview done in 1981 in “Modern Fiction Studies” Burgess was quoted, “I’m not particularly proud of A Clockwork Orange because it has all the thoughts I rail against in fiction. It’s didactic. It tends to pornography.” John Anthony Burgess Wilson died in 1993 and will always be remembered by the remains of some of his classic works.