Burgess, Anthony

Burgess, Anthony (1917-1993), British novelist and critic, best remembered for his controversial novel, A Clockwork Orange.

Burgess was born in Manchester where he went to school and university, graduating in literature and philology. He served in the army between 1940 and 1946, and then became a lecturer at Birmingham University. From 1948 to 1950 he worked for the Ministry of Education and was later appointed Education Officer in the Colonial Service, based in Borneo and Malaya (1954-1959). It was during his time abroad that he began to write, producing his first three novels Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959), published together as The Malayan Trilogy in 1972.

It was his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) that earned him a huge amount of publicity, particularly when its popularity almost reached cult-level following Stanley Kubrick's film of the book in 1972. The film was so powerfully affecting in its portrayal of gang violence that Kubrick subsequently refused to allow it to be shown in Britain; the film had been accused of causing violent incidents. Burgess's prolific literary output in the 1960s and 1970s was characterized by skilful verbal inventiveness and pointed social satire. More recent novels, notable for their ambitiousness of scope, are Earthly Powers (1980) and Kingdom of the Wicked (1985), which tackles the subject of early Christianity. His last novel was A Dead Man in Deptford (1993), Burgess's interpretation of the life and death of 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe.

His works of criticism include studies of Joyce and biographies of D. H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote two volumes of autobiography Little Wilson and Big God (1987) and You've Had Your Time (1990).