Anthony Burgess Biography and List of Works

English novelist, composer, and critic, whose novels are characterized by verbal inventiveness and social satire. Burgess has also written several biographies. However, the author's first love was music: he composed a number of works before publishing his first books. Among Burgess's best-know novels is A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962).

"'What's going to be then, eh?'
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard through dry."
(the beginning of A Clockwork Orange)

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester into a Catholic middle-class family. His father was a cashier and pub pianist. After his mother died in the flu pandemic of 1919, he was brought up by a maternal aunt and later by his stepmother. He studied at Xaverian College and Manchester University, where he read English language and literature, graduating in 1940. During World War II Burgess served at the Royal Army Medical corps. In 1942 he married Llwela Isherwood Jones, who died of alcoholic cirrhosis in 1968.

From 1946 to 1950 Burgess taught at Birmingham University, worked for the Ministry of Education, and was a teacher at Banbury Grammar School. Burgess wrote comparatively little until 1959, but primarily studied music composition. His first novel, A VISION OF BATTLEMENT, was completed in 1949 but published in 1965. It is loosely based on the Aeneid and shows the influence of Joyce. In 1954 Burgess became an education officer in Malaya and Brunei, during this period he completed his trilogy TIME FOR A TIGER (1956), THE ENEMY IN THE BLANKET (1958), and BEDS IN THE EAST (1959). The work juxtapositions the progressive disintegration of a hapless civil servant against the birth of Malayan independence.

After collapsing in the classroom Burgess returned to England, was diagnosed as having a cerebral tumour, and given twelve months to live. Concerned about leaving his wife without means, he began a rush of literary activity. Under this premature death sentence, Burgess wrote feverishly. Happily, the doctor's diagnosis was wrong, and the author lived for another 33 years, producing over fifty books and hundreds of journalistic pieces.

In 1959 Burgess devoted himself entirely to writing, living in Malta, Italy, US, and Monaco. Between 1960 and 1964 Burgess wrote eleven novels. THE WANTING SEED (1962) depicts an overpopulated England of the future, caught up in alternating cycles of libertarianism and totalitarianism. In 1962 his most famous science fiction fable was published, A Clockwork Orange, which made him famous as a satirical novelist, and which was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in the 1970s. The novel was born from the growth of teenage gangs, (in 1961 Burgess had observed the Stilyaqi, gangs of young thugs in Leningrad), and the universal application of B.F. Skinner's behavioural theories concerning prisons, asylums, and psychiatric clinics.

A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London and is told in nadsat, a mixture of Russian, English and American slang, gipsy talk and odd bits of Jacobean prose. Alex, the main character, is a juvenile delinquent, who is brainwashed by authorities in an attempt to change his murderous aggressions. As an unexpected side effect, he starts to hate Beethoven's music, losing symbolically his deep-seated sense of humanity. The central question of the story is a metaphysical and social one: is an 'evil' human being with free choice preferable to a 'good' zombie without it? Although Burgess intended the novel to be a study on free will and psychological behaviourism, its unique language and the character of Alex gained cult status. Kubrick later withdrew his film following a moral panic about 'copycat killings' allegedly performed by a youth wearing the costume of Alex and his 'droogs'. - The original London edition of the book includes a final chapter that anticipates a future for Alex wherein he chooses a law-abiding life. The American version ends with Alex reverting to his natural, evil self. "But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes the little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal."

Burgess returned to the themes in A Clockwork Orange in the humorous novel ENDERBY (1968), which follows the travels of an unconformist poet in England and on the Continent. In the sequel, THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT; OR, ENDERBY'S END (1975) the hero, Burgess's alter ego, lives in New York. The book is a merciless assault on the American media and academia, and the decline of language.

In 1968 Burgess married an Italian countess and they spent much of their time on the Continent - although he managed to appear frequently on TV chat shows and as a columnist in British newspapers. In 1970-71 Burgess was a visiting professor at Princeton University, a Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York (1972-72), and a writer-in-residence at the University of New York at Buffalo (1976). He was appointed a literary adviser to the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, in 1972. From 1975 until the death of his second wife eight years later, Burgess lived in Malta.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s Burgess published some thirty books, among them THE EARTHLY POWERS (1980), which is considered by many critics Burgess's finest novel. Narrated by an 81-year-old successful, homosexual writer, Kenneth Toomey, a figure loosely based on W. Somerset Maugham, it strives to 'justify the ways of God to Men.' The novel contains many jokes about major literary figures. THE KINGDOM OF THE WICKED (1985) takes the first years of Christianity as its subject. Burgess's third symphony was performed at the University of Iowa in 1975, and his musical version of Ulysses, Blooms and Dublin, was performed on radio on the centenary of James Joyce's death.

Burgess wrote film scripts and several critical studies - he was a specialist in Shakespeare and Joyce His musical compositions include symphonies, a ballet, and an opera. Burgess's autobiographies, LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD (1987) and YOU'VE HAD YOUR TIME (1990) reveal a more self-doubting personality than the one that was his public image. When he appeared on BBC's Newsnight immediately after the death of author Graham Greene, Burgess could not help talking about himself.

For further information: The Consolation of Ambiguity: An Essay on the Novels of Anthony Burgess by R.K. Morris (1971); Anthony Burgess by C. Dix (1972); Anthony Burgess by A..A. DeVitis (1972); Anthony Burgess: A Bibliography by P. Boytinck (1977); Anthony Burgess: An Enumerative Bibliography by Jeutonne Brewer (1980); Anthony Burgess by Samuel Coale (1981); Anthony Burgess: A Study in Character by Martina Ghosg-Schellhorn (1986); Anthony Burgess Revisited, by John J. Stinson (1992, Twayne's English Author Series, No 482).

THE MALAYAN TRILOGY: TIME FOR A TIGER, (1956)
THE ENEMY IN THE BLANKET, (1958)
ENGLISH LITERATURE, (1958)
BEDS IN THE EAST, (1959)
THE DOCTOR IS SICK, (1960)
THE RIGHT TO AN ANSWER, (1960)
ONE HAND CLAPPIN, (1961)
DEVIL OF A STATE, (1961)
THE WORM AND THE RING, (1961)
THE NEW ARISTOCRATS, (1962)
OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE, (1962)
THE WANTING SEED, (1962)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, (1962)
HONEY FOR THE BEARS, (1963)
INSIDE MR. ENDERBY, (1963)
THE NOVEL TODAY, (1963)
THE EVE OF SAINT VENUS, (1964)
LANGUAGE MADE PLAIN, (1964)
NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, (1964)
THE MAN WHO ROBBED POOR BOXES, (1965)
TREMOR OF INTENT, (1965)
HERE COMES EVERYBODY, (1965)
A VISION OF BATTLEMENTS, (1965)
JAMES JOYCE: A SHORTER FINNEGANS WAKE, (1966)
THE COANCHING-DAYS OF ENGLAND, (1750)
THE AGE OF GRAND TOUR, (1720)
TREMOR OF INTENT, (1966)
DANIEL DEFOE: THE JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, (1966)
THE NOVEL NOW, (1967)
ENDERBY OUTSIDE, (1968)
URGENT COPY, (1968)
MALAYSIAN STORIES, BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, (1969)
SHAKESPEARE, (1970)
MF, (1971)
EDWARD ROSTAND: CYRANO DE BERGERAC, (1971)
SOPHOCLES: OEDIPUS THE KING, (1972)
JOYSPRICK, (1973)
OBSCENITY AND THE ARTS, (1973)
NAPOLEON SYMPHONY, (1974)
THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT, (1974)
MOSES - THE LAWGIVER, (1975)
A LONG TRIP TO TEATIME, (1976)
NEW YORK, (1976)
BEARD'S ROMAN WOMAN, (1976)
MOSES: A NARRATIVE, (1976)
ABBA ABBA, (1977)
WILL AND TESTAMENT, (1977)
A CHRISTMAS RECIPE, (1977)
JESUS OF NAZARETH, (1977)
ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND HIS WORLD, (1978)
MAN OF NAZARETH, (1979)
THE LAND WHERE THE ICE-CREAM GROWS, (1979)
EARTHLY POWERS, (1980)
QUEST FOR FIRE, (1981)
A KIND OF FAILURE, (1981)
THIS MAN AND MUSIC, (1982)
THE CAVALIER OF THE ROSE, (1982)
THE END OF THE WORLD NEWS, (1982)
ON GOING TO BED, (1982)
ENDERBY'S DARK LADY, (1984)
THE KINGDOM OF THE WICKED, (1985)
A.D., (1985)
THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST, (1985)
OBERON ALD AND NEW, (1985)
FLAME INTO BEING: THE LIFE AND WORK OF D.H. LAWRENCE, (1985)
CYRANO DE BERGERAC, (1985)
LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD, (1986)
THE PIANOPLAYERS, (1986)
CARMEN, (1986)
BLOOMS IN DUBLIN, (1986)
LUDOVIC HALÉVY AND HENRI MEILHAC: CARMEN, (1986)
HOMAGE TO QWERT YUIOP, (1986)
LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD, (1987)
THEY WROTE IN ENGLISH, (1988)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, (1987)
ANY OLD IRON, (1989)
THE DEVIL'S MODE, (1989)
YOU'VE HAD YOUR TIME, (1990)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, (2004)
MOZART AND THE WOLF GANG, (1991)
A MEETING IN VALLADOLID, (1991)
THE LONG DAY WANES: A MALAYAN TRILOGY, (1992)
A MOUTHFUL OF AIR, (1992)
A DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD, (1993)
BYRNE: A NOVEL, (1997)
translation: CYRANO DE BERGRAC, (1997)
ONE MAN'S CHORUS: THE UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS, (1998)