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Anthony Burgess

John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL (/ˈbɜːrəs/;[2] 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.

Anthony Burgess

Burgess in 1986
BornJohn Burgess Wilson
(1917-02-25)25 February 1917
Harpurhey, Manchester, England
Died22 November 1993(1993-11-22) (aged 76)
St John's Wood, London, England
Pen nameAnthony Burgess, John Burgess Wilson, Joseph Kell[1]
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • critic
  • composer
  • librettist
  • playwright
  • screenwriter
  • essayist
  • travel writer
  • broadcaster
  • translator
  • linguist
  • educationalist
Alma materVictoria University of Manchester (BA English Literature)
Period1956–1993
Notable awardsCommandeur des Arts et des Lettres, distinction of France Monégasque, Commandeur de Merite Culturel (Monaco), Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, honorary degrees from St Andrews, Birmingham and Manchester universities
Spouse
Llewela Isherwood Jones
(m. 1942; died 1968)

(m. 1968)
ChildrenPaolo Andrea (1964–2002)
Signature

Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel.[3] In 1971, it was adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic for several publications, including The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, and the opera Carmen, among others.

Burgess also composed over 250 musical works; he considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he achieved considerably more success in writing.[4]

Biography

Early life

In 1917, Burgess was born at 91 Carisbrook Street in Harpurhey, a suburb of Manchester, England, to Catholic parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Wilson.[5] He described his background as lower middle class; growing up during the Great Depression, his parents, who were shopkeepers, were fairly well off, as the demand for their tobacco and alcohol wares remained constant. He was known in childhood as Jack, Little Jack, and Johnny Eagle.[6] At his confirmation, the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson. He began using the pen name Anthony Burgess upon the publication of his 1956 novel Time for a Tiger.[5]

His mother Elizabeth (née Burgess) died at the age of 30 at home on 19 November 1918, during the 1918 flu pandemic. The causes listed on her death certificate were influenza, acute pneumonia, and cardiac failure. His sister Muriel had died four days earlier on 15 November from influenza, broncho-pneumonia, and cardiac failure, aged eight.[7] Burgess believed he was resented by his father, Joseph Wilson, for having survived, when his mother and sister did not.[8]

After the death of his mother, Burgess was raised by his maternal aunt, Ann Bromley, in Crumpsall with her two daughters. During this time, Burgess's father worked as a bookkeeper for a beef market by day, and in the evening played piano at a public house in Miles Platting.[6] After his father married the landlady of this pub, Margaret Dwyer, in 1922, Burgess was raised by his father and stepmother.[9] By 1924 the couple had established a tobacconist and off-licence business with four properties.[10] Burgess was briefly employed at the tobacconist shop as a child.[11] On 18 April 1938, Joseph Wilson died from cardiac failure, pleurisy, and influenza at the age of 55, leaving no inheritance despite his apparent business success.[12] Burgess's stepmother died of a heart attack in 1940.[13]

Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood "I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored. I was one despised. ... Ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well-dressed like myself."[14] Burgess attended St. Edmund's Elementary School before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, both Catholic schools, in Moss Side.[15] He later reflected "When I went to school I was able to read. At the Manchester elementary school I attended, most of the children could not read, so I was ... a little apart, rather different from the rest."[16] Good grades resulted in a place at Xaverian College (1928–37).[5]

Music

Burgess was indifferent to music until he heard on his home-built radio "a quite incredible flute solo", which he characterised as "sinuous, exotic, erotic", and became spellbound.[17] Eight minutes later the announcer told him he had been listening to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy. He referred to this as a "psychedelic moment ... a recognition of verbally inexpressible spiritual realities".[17] When Burgess announced to his family that he wanted to be a composer, they objected as "there was no money in it".[17] Music was not taught at his school, but at the age of about 14 he taught himself to play the piano.[18]

University

Burgess had originally hoped to study music at university, but the music department at the Victoria University of Manchester turned down his application because of poor grades in physics.[19] Instead, he studied English language and literature there between 1937 and 1940, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. His thesis concerned Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and he graduated with an upper second-class honours, which he found disappointing.[20] When grading one of Burgess's term papers, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote "Bright ideas insufficient to conceal lack of knowledge."[21]

Marriage

Burgess met Llewela "Lynne" Isherwood Jones at the university where she was studying economics, politics and modern history, graduating in 1942 with an upper second-class.[22] Burgess and Jones were married on 22 January 1942.[5] She was daughter of secondary school headmaster Edward Jones (1886–1963) and Florence (née Jones; 1867–1956), and reportedly claimed to be a distant relative of Christopher Isherwood, although the Lewis and Biswell biographies dispute this.[23] Per Burgess's own account, it was not from his wife that the alleged connection to Christopher Isherwood originated: "Her father was an English Jones, her mother a Welsh one. [...] Of Christopher Isherwood [...] neither the Jones father or daughter had heard. She was unliterary..."[24] Biswell identifies Burgess as the origin of the alleged relationship with Christopher Isherwood- "if the rumour of an Isherwood affiliation signifies anything, it is that Burgess wanted people to believe that he was connected by marriage to another famous writer"- and notes that "Llewela was not, as Burgess claims in his autobiography, a 'cousin' of the writer Christopher Isherwood"; referring to a pedigree owned by the family, Biswell observes that "Llewela's father was descended from a female Isherwood"... "which means going back four generations... before encountering any Isherwoods", making any connection "at best" "tenuous and distant". He also establishes that per official records, "Llewela's family name was Jones, not (as Burgess liked to suggest) 'Isherwood Jones' or 'Isherwood-Jones'."[25]

Military service

Burgess spent six weeks in 1940 as a British Army recruit in Eskbank before becoming a Nursing Orderly Class 3 in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During his service, he was unpopular and was involved in incidents such as knocking off a corporal's cap and polishing the floor of a corridor to make people slip.[26] In 1941, Burgess was pursued by the Royal Military Police for desertion after overstaying his leave from Morpeth military base with his future bride Lynne. The following year he asked to be transferred to the Army Educational Corps and, despite his loathing of authority, he was promoted to sergeant.[27] During the blackout, his pregnant wife Lynne was raped and assaulted by four American deserters; perhaps as a result, she lost the child.[5][28] Burgess, stationed at the time in Gibraltar, was denied leave to see her.[29]

At his stationing in Gibraltar, which he later wrote about in A Vision of Battlements, he worked as a training college lecturer in speech and drama, teaching alongside Ann McGlinn in German, French and Spanish.[citation needed] McGlinn's communist ideology would have a major influence on his later novel A Clockwork Orange. Burgess played a key role in "The British Way and Purpose" programme, designed to introduce members of the forces to the peacetime socialism of the post-war years in Britain.[30] He was an instructor for the Central Advisory Council for Forces Education of the Ministry of Education.[5] Burgess's flair for languages was noticed by army intelligence, and he took part in debriefings of Dutch expatriates and Free French who found refuge in Gibraltar during the war. In the neighbouring Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción, he was arrested for insulting General Franco but released from custody shortly after the incident.[31]

Early teaching career

Burgess left the army in 1946 with the rank of sergeant-major. For the next four years he was a lecturer in speech and drama at the Mid-West School of Education near Wolverhampton and at the Bamber Bridge Emergency Teacher Training College near Preston.[5] Burgess taught in the extramural department of Birmingham University (1946–50).[32]

In late 1950, he began working as a secondary school teacher at Banbury Grammar School (now Banbury School) teaching English literature. In addition to his teaching duties, he supervised sports and ran the school's drama society. He organised a number of amateur theatrical events in his spare time. These involved local people and students and included productions of T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes.[33] Reports from his former students and colleagues indicate that he cared deeply about teaching.[34]

With financial assistance provided by Lynne's father, the couple was able to put a down payment on a cottage in the village of Adderbury, close to Banbury. He named the cottage "Little Gidding" after one of Eliot's Four Quartets. Burgess cut his journalistic teeth in Adderbury, writing several articles for the local newspaper, the Banbury Guardian.[35][better source needed]

Malaya

 
The Malay College in Kuala Kangsar, Perak, where Burgess taught 1954–55

In 1954, Burgess joined the British Colonial Service as a teacher and education officer in Malaya, initially stationed at Kuala Kangsar in Perak. Here he taught at the Malay College (now Malay College Kuala Kangsar – MCKK), modeled on English public school lines. In addition to his teaching duties, he was a housemaster in charge of students of the preparatory school, who were housed at a Victorian mansion known as "King's Pavilion".[36][37] A variety of the music he wrote there was influenced by the country, notably Sinfoni Melayu for orchestra and brass band, which included cries of Merdeka (independence) from the audience. No score, however, is extant.[38]

Burgess and his wife had occupied a noisy apartment where privacy was minimal, and this caused resentment. Following a dispute with the Malay College's principal about this, Burgess was reposted to the Malay Teachers' Training College at Kota Bharu, Kelantan.[39] Burgess attained fluency in Malay, spoken and written, achieving distinction in the examinations in the language set by the Colonial Office. He was rewarded with a salary increase for his proficiency in the language.

He devoted some of his free time in Malaya to creative writing "as a sort of gentlemanly hobby, because I knew there wasn't any money in it," and published his first novels: Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East.[40] These became known as The Malayan Trilogy and were later published in one volume as The Long Day Wanes.

Brunei

 
Burgess was an education officer at the Malay Teachers' Training College 1955 and 1958.

After a brief period of leave in Britain during 1958, Burgess took up a further Eastern post, this time at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin College in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. Brunei had been a British protectorate since 1888, and was not to achieve independence until 1984. In the sultanate, Burgess sketched the novel that, when it was published in 1961, was to be entitled Devil of a State and, although it dealt with Brunei, for libel reasons the action had to be transposed to an imaginary East African territory similar to Zanzibar, named Dunia. In his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God (1987) Burgess wrote:[41]

This novel was, is, about Brunei, which was renamed Naraka, Malay-Sanskrit for "hell". Little invention was needed to contrive a large cast of unbelievable characters and a number of interwoven plots. Though completed in 1958, the work was not published until 1961, for what it was worth it was made a choice of the book society. Heinemann, my publisher, was doubtful about publishing it: it might be libellous. I had to change the setting from Brunei to an East African one. Heinemann was right to be timorous. In early 1958, The Enemy in the Blanket appeared and at once provoked a libel suit.

About this time, Burgess collapsed in a Brunei classroom while teaching history and was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour.[19] Burgess was given just a year to live, prompting him to write several novels to get money to provide for his widow.[19] He gave a different account, however, to Jeremy Isaacs in a Face to Face interview on the BBC The Late Show (21 March 1989). He said "Looking back now I see that I was driven out of the Colonial Service. I think possibly for political reasons that were disguised as clinical reasons".[42] He alluded to this in an interview with Don Swaim, explaining that his wife Lynne had said something "obscene" to the Duke of Edinburgh during an official visit, and the colonial authorities turned against him.[43][44] He had already earned their displeasure, he told Swaim, by writing articles in the newspaper in support of the revolutionary opposition party the Parti Rakyat Brunei, and for his friendship with its leader Dr. Azahari.[43][44] Burgess' biographers attribute the incident to the author's notorious mythomania. Geoffrey Grigson writes:[35]

He was, however, suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking (and associated poor nutrition), of the often oppressive south-east Asian climate, of chronic constipation, and of overwork and professional disappointment. As he put it, the scions of the sultans and of the élite in Brunei "did not wish to be taught", because the free-flowing abundance of oil guaranteed their income and privileged status. He may also have wished for a pretext to abandon teaching and get going full-time as a writer, having made a late start.

Repatriate years

Burgess was invalided home in 1959[45] and relieved of his position in Brunei. He spent some time in the neurological ward of a London hospital (see The Doctor is Sick) where he underwent cerebral tests that found no illness. On discharge, benefiting from a sum of money which Lynne Burgess had inherited from her father, together with their savings built up over six years in the East, he decided to become a full-time writer. The couple lived first in an apartment in Hove, near Brighton. They later moved to a semi-detached house called "Applegarth" in Etchingham, about four miles from Bateman's where Rudyard Kipling had lived in Burwash, and one mile from the Robertsbridge home of Malcolm Muggeridge.[46] Upon the death of Burgess's father-in-law, the couple used their inheritance to decamp to a terraced town house in Chiswick. This provided convenient access to the BBC Television Centre where he later became a frequent guest. During these years Burgess became a regular drinking partner of the novelist William S. Burroughs. Their meetings took place in London and Tangiers.[47]

A sea voyage the couple took with the Baltic Line from Tilbury to Leningrad in June 1961[48] resulted in the novel Honey for the Bears. He wrote in his autobiographical You've Had Your Time (1990), that in re-learning Russian at this time, he found inspiration for the Russian-based slang Nadsat that he created for A Clockwork Orange, going on to note, "I would resist to the limit any publisher's demand that a glossary be provided."[49][Notes 1]

Liana Macellari, an Italian translator twelve years younger than Burgess, came across his novels Inside Mr. Enderby and A Clockwork Orange, while writing about English fiction.[50] The two first met in 1963 over lunch in Chiswick and began an affair. In 1964, Liana gave birth to Burgess's son, Paolo Andrea. The affair was hidden from Burgess's alcoholic wife, whom he refused to leave for fear of offending his cousin (by Burgess's stepmother, Margaret Dwyer Wilson), George Dwyer, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds.[50]

Lynne Burgess died from cirrhosis of the liver, on 20 March 1968.[5] Six months later, in September 1968, Burgess married Liana, acknowledging her four-year-old boy as his own, although the birth certificate listed Roy Halliday, Liana's former partner, as the father.[50] Paolo Andrea (also known as Andrew Burgess Wilson) died in London in 2002, aged 37.[51] Liana died in 2007.[50]

Tax exile

 
Appearing on British television discussion programme After Dark "What is Sex For?" in 1988

Burgess was a Conservative (though, as he clarified in an interview with The Paris Review, his political views could be considered "a kind of anarchism" since his ideal of a "Catholic Jacobite imperial monarch" was not practicable[52]) a (lapsed) Catholic and monarchist, harbouring a distaste for all republics. He believed socialism for the most part was "ridiculous" but did "concede that socialised medicine is a priority in any civilised country today".[52] To avoid the 90% tax the family would have incurred because of their high income, they left Britain and toured Europe in a Bedford Dormobile motor-home. During their travels through France and across the Alps, Burgess wrote in the back of the van as Liana drove.

In this period, he wrote novels and produced film scripts for Lew Grade and Franco Zeffirelli.[50] His first place of residence after leaving England was Lija, Malta (1968–70). The negative reaction from a lecture that Burgess delivered to an audience of Catholic priests in Malta precipitated a move by the couple to Italy[50] after the Maltese government confiscated the property.[11] (He would go on to fictionalise these events in Earthly Powers a decade later.[11]) The Burgesses maintained a flat in Rome, a country house in Bracciano, and a property in Montalbuccio. On hearing rumours of a mafia plot to kidnap Paolo Andrea while the family was staying in Rome, Burgess decided to move to Monaco in 1975.[53] Burgess was also motivated to move to the tax haven of Monaco, as the country did not levy income tax, and widows were exempt from death duties, a form of taxation on their husband's estates.[54]

The couple also had a villa in France, at Callian, Var, Provence.[55]

Burgess lived for two years in the United States, working as a visiting professor at Princeton University with the creative writing program (1970) and as a distinguished professor at the City College of New York (1972). At City College he was a close colleague and friend of Joseph Heller. He went on to teach creative writing at Columbia University and was writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1969) and at the University at Buffalo (1976). He lectured on the novel at the University of Iowa in 1975. Eventually he settled in Monaco in 1976, where he was active in the local community, becoming a co-founder in 1984 of the Princess Grace Irish Library, a centre for Irish cultural studies.

In May 1988, Burgess made an extended appearance with, among others, Andrea Dworkin on the episode What Is Sex For? of discussion programme After Dark. He spoke at one point about divorce:[56]

Liking involves no discipline; love does ... A marriage, say that lasts twenty years or more, is a kind of civilisation, a kind of microcosm – it develops its own language, its own semiotics, its own slang, its own shorthand ... sex is part of it, part of the semiotics. To destroy, wantonly, such a relationship, is like destroying a whole civilisation.

Although Burgess lived not far from Graham Greene, whose house was in Antibes, Greene became aggrieved shortly before his death by comments in newspaper articles by Burgess, and broke off all contact.[35] Gore Vidal revealed in his 2006 memoir Point to Point Navigation that Greene disapproved of Burgess's appearance on various European television stations to discuss his (Burgess') books.[35] Vidal recounts that Greene apparently regarded a willingness to appear on television as something that ought to be beneath a writer's dignity.[35] "He talks about his books", Vidal quotes an exasperated Greene as saying.[35]

During this time, Burgess spent much time at his chalet two kilometres (1+14 miles) outside Lugano, Switzerland.

Death

 
Burgess's grave marker at the Columbarium in Monaco's cemetery

Burgess wrote: "I shall die somewhere in the Mediterranean lands, with an inaccurate obituary in the Nice-Matin, unmourned, soon forgotten."[57] In fact, Burgess died in the country of his birth. He returned to Twickenham, an outer suburb of London, where he owned a house, to await death. Burgess died on 22 November 1993 from lung cancer, at the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth in London. His ashes were inurned at the Monaco Cemetery.

The epitaph on Burgess's marble memorial stone, reads: "Abba Abba", which means "Father, father" in Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic languages and is pronounced by Christ during his agony in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36) as he prays God to spare him. It is also the title of Burgess's 22nd novel, concerning the death of John Keats. Eulogies at his memorial service at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, in 1994 were delivered by the journalist Auberon Waugh and the novelist William Boyd.[citation needed] The Times obituary heralded the author as "a great moralist".[58] His estate was worth US$3 million and included a large European property portfolio of houses and apartments.[50]

Life in music

An accomplished musician, Burgess composed regularly throughout his life, and once said:[59]

I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.

Several of his pieces were broadcast during his lifetime on BBC Radio. His Symphony No. 3 in C was premiered by the University of Iowa orchestra in Iowa City in 1975. Burgess described his Sinfoni Melayu as an attempt to "combine the musical elements of the country [Malaya] into a synthetic language which called on native drums and xylophones". The structure of Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (1974) was modelled on Beethoven's Eroica symphony,[60] while Mozart and the Wolf Gang (1991) mirrors the sound and rhythm of Mozartian composition, among other things attempting a fictional representation of Symphony No. 40.[61]

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 features prominently in A Clockwork Orange (and in Stanley Kubrick's film version of the novel). Many of his unpublished compositions are listed in This Man and Music. He wrote a good deal of music for recorder as his son played the instrument. Several of his pieces for recorder and piano including the Sonata No. 1, Sonatina and "Tre Pezzetti" have been included on a major CD release from recorder player John Turner and pianist Harvey Davies; the double album also includes related music from 15 other composers and is titled Anthony Burgess – The Man and his Music.[62]

Burgess produced a translation of Meilhac and Halévy's libretto to Bizet's Carmen, which was performed by the English National Opera, and wrote for the 1973 Broadway musical Cyrano, using his own adaptation of the original Rostand play as his basis. He created Blooms of Dublin in 1982, an operetta based on James Joyce's Ulysses (televised for the BBC) and wrote a libretto for Weber's Oberon, performed by the Glasgow-based Scottish Opera.[citation needed]

On the BBC's Desert Island Discs radio programme in 1966,[63] Burgess chose as his favourite music Purcell's "Rejoice in the Lord Alway"; Bach's Goldberg Variations No. 13; Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major; Wagner's "Walter's Trial Song" from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg; Debussy's "Fêtes" from Nocturnes; Lambert's The Rio Grande; Walton's Symphony No. 1 in B-flat minor; and Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge.

Linguistics

"Burgess's linguistic training", wrote Raymond Chapman and Tom McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language: "... is shown in dialogue enriched by distinctive pronunciations and the niceties of register".[64] During his years in Malaya, and after he had mastered Jawi, the Arabic script adapted for Malay, Burgess taught himself the Persian language, after which he produced a translation of Eliot's The Waste Land into Persian (unpublished). He worked on an anthology of the best of English literature translated into Malay, which failed to achieve publication. Burgess's published translations include two versions of Cyrano de Bergerac,[65] Oedipus the King[66] and Carmen.

Burgess's interest in language was reflected in the invented, Anglo-Russian teen slang of A Clockwork Orange (Nadsat), and in the movie Quest for Fire (1981), for which he invented a prehistoric language (Ulam) for the characters. His interest is reflected in his characters. In The Doctor is Sick, Dr Edwin Spindrift is a lecturer in linguistics who escapes from a hospital ward which is peopled, as the critic Saul Maloff put it in a review, with "brain cases who happily exemplify varieties of English speech". Burgess, who had lectured on phonetics at the University of Birmingham in the late 1940s, investigates the field of linguistics in Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air.

The depth of Burgess's multilingual proficiency came under discussion in Roger Lewis's 2002 biography. Lewis claimed that during production in Malaysia of the BBC documentary A Kind of Failure (1982), Burgess's supposedly fluent Malay was not understood by waitresses at a restaurant where they were filming. It was claimed that the documentary's director deliberately kept these moments intact in the film to expose Burgess's linguistic pretensions. A letter from David Wallace that appeared in the magazine of the London Independent on Sunday newspaper on 25 November 2002 shed light on the affair. Wallace's letter read, in part:

... the tale was inaccurate. It tells of Burgess, the great linguist, "bellowing Malay at a succession of Malayan waitresses" but "unable to make himself understood". The source of this tale was a 20-year-old BBC documentary ... [The suggestion was] that the director left the scene in, in order to poke fun at the great author. Not so, and I can be sure, as I was that director ... The story as seen on television made it clear that Burgess knew that these waitresses were not Malay. It was a Chinese restaurant and Burgess's point was that the ethnic Chinese had little time for the government-enforced national language, Bahasa Malaysia [Malay]. Burgess may well have had an accent, but he did speak the language; it was the girls in question who did not.

Lewis may not have been fully aware of the fact that a quarter of Malaysia's population is made up of Hokkien- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese. However, Malay had been installed as the National Language with the passing of the Language Act of 1967. By 1982 all national primary and secondary schools in Malaysia would have been teaching with Bahasa Melayu as a base language (see Harold Crouch, Government and Society in Malaysia, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996).

Work

Novels

His Malayan trilogy The Long Day Wanes was Burgess's first published fiction. Its three books are Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East. Devil of a State is a follow-on to the trilogy, set in a fictionalised version of Brunei. It was Burgess's ambition to become "the true fictional expert on Malaya".[citation needed] In these works, Burgess was working in the tradition established by Kipling for British India, and Conrad and Maugham for Southeast Asia. Burgess operated more in the mode of Orwell, who had a good command of Urdu and Burmese (necessary for Orwell's work as a police officer) and Kipling, who spoke Hindi (having learnt it as a child). Like many of his fellow English expatriates in Asia, Burgess had excellent spoken and written command of his operative language(s), both as a novelist and as a speaker, including Malay.

Burgess's repatriate years (c. 1960–1969) produced Enderby and The Right to an Answer, which touches on the theme of death and dying, and One Hand Clapping, a satire on the vacuity of popular culture. The Worm and the Ring (1961) had to be withdrawn from circulation under the threat of libel action from one of Burgess's former colleagues, a school secretary.[67]

His dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange, was published in 1962. It was inspired initially by an incident during the London Blitz of World War II in which his wife Lynne was robbed, assaulted, and violated by deserters from the US Army in London during the blackout. The event may have contributed to her subsequent miscarriage. The book was an examination of free will and morality. The young anti-hero, Alex, captured after a short career of violence and mayhem, undergoes a course of aversion therapy treatment to curb his violent tendencies. This results in making him defenceless against other people and unable to enjoy some of his favourite music that, besides violence, had been an intense pleasure for him. In the non-fiction book Flame into Being (1985), Burgess described A Clockwork Orange as "a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks. It became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence". He added, "the film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die". In a 1980 BBC interview, Burgess distanced himself from the novel and cinematic adaptations. Near the time of publication, the final chapter was cut from the American edition of the book.[citation needed]

Burgess had written A Clockwork Orange with 21 chapters, meaning to match the age of majority. "21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at 21 you got to vote and assumed adult responsibility", Burgess wrote in a foreword for a 1986 edition. Needing money and thinking that the publisher was "being charitable in accepting the work at all," Burgess accepted the deal and allowed A Clockwork Orange to be published in the US with the twenty-first chapter omitted. Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American edition, and thus helped to perpetuate the loss of the last chapter. In 2021, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation premiered a webpage cataloging various stage productions of "A Clockwork Orange" from around the world.[68]

In Martin Seymour-Smith's Novels and Novelists: A Guide to the World of Fiction, Burgess related that he would often prepare a synopsis with a name-list before beginning a project. Seymour-Smith wrote:[69]

Burgess believes overplanning is fatal to creativity and regards his unconscious mind and the act of writing itself as indispensable guides. He does not produce a draft of a whole novel but prefers to get one page finished before he goes on to the next, which involves a good deal of revision and correction.

Nothing Like the Sun is a fictional recreation of Shakespeare's love-life and an examination of the supposedly partly syphilitic sources of the bard's imaginative vision. The novel, which drew on Edgar I. Fripp's 1938 biography Shakespeare, Man and artist, won critical acclaim and placed Burgess among the first rank novelists of his generation. M/F (1971) was listed by the writer himself as one of the works of which he was most proud. Beard's Roman Women was revealing on a personal level, dealing with the death of his first wife, his bereavement, and the affair that led to his second marriage. In Napoleon Symphony, Burgess brought Bonaparte to life by shaping the novel's structure to Beethoven's Eroica symphony. The novel contains a portrait of an Arab and Muslim society under occupation by a Christian western power (Egypt by Catholic France). In the 1980s, religious themes began to feature heavily (The Kingdom of the Wicked, Man of Nazareth, Earthly Powers). Though Burgess lapsed from Catholicism early in his youth, the influence of the Catholic "training" and worldview remained strong in his work all his life. This is notable in the discussion of free will in A Clockwork Orange, and in the apocalyptic vision of devastating changes in the Catholic Church – due to what can be understood as Satanic influence – in Earthly Powers (1980).

Burgess kept working through his final illness and was writing on his deathbed. The late novel Any Old Iron is a generational saga of two families, one Russian-Welsh, the other Jewish, encompassing the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the early years of the State of Israel, and the rediscovery of Excalibur. A Dead Man in Deptford, about Christopher Marlowe, is a companion novel to Nothing Like the Sun. The verse novel Byrne was published posthumously.

Burgess announced in a 1972 interview that he was writing a novel about the Black Prince which incorporated John Dos Passos's narrative techniques, although he never finished writing it.[52] After Burgess's death, English writer Adam Roberts completed the novel, and it was published in 2018.[70] In 2019, a previously unpublished analysis of A Clockwork Orange was discovered titled, "The Clockwork Condition".[71] It is structured as Burgess's philosophical musings on the novel that won him so much acclaim.

Critical studies

Burgess started his career as a critic. His English Literature, A Survey for Students was aimed at newcomers to the subject. He followed this with The Novel To-day (Longmans, 1963) and The Novel Now: A Student's Guide to Contemporary Fiction (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1967). He wrote the Joyce studies Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (also published as Re Joyce) and Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce. Also published was A Shorter "Finnegans Wake", Burgess's abridgement. His 1970 Encyclopædia Britannica entry on the novel (under "Novel, the"[72]) is regarded[by whom?] as a classic of the genre. Burgess wrote full-length critical studies of William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway and D. H. Lawrence, as well as Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939.[73]

Screenwriting

Burgess wrote the screenplays for Moses the Lawgiver (Gianfranco De Bosio 1974), Jesus of Nazareth (Franco Zeffirelli 1977), and A.D. (Stuart Cooper, 1985). Burgess was co-writer of the script for the TV series Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1980). The film treatments he produced include Amundsen, Attila, The Black Prince, Cyrus the Great, Dawn Chorus, The Dirty Tricks of Bertoldo, Eternal Life, Onassis, Puma, Samson and Delilah, Schreber, The Sexual Habits of the English Middle Class, Shah, That Man Freud and Uncle Ludwig. Burgess devised a Stone Age language for La Guerre du Feu (Quest for Fire; Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1981).

Burgess wrote many unpublished scripts, including Will! or The Bawdy Bard about Shakespeare, based on the novel Nothing Like The Sun. Encouraged by the success of Tremor of Intent (a parody of James Bond adventures), Burgess wrote a screenplay for The Spy Who Loved Me featuring characters from and a similar tone to the novel.[74] It had Bond fighting the criminal organization CHAOS in Singapore to try to stop an assassination of Queen Elizabeth II using surgically implanted bombs at Sydney Opera House. It was described as "an outrageous medley of sadism, hypnosis, acupuncture, and international terrorism".[75] His screenplay was rejected, although the huge submarine silo seen in the finished film was reportedly Burgess's inspiration.[76]

Archive

The largest archive of Anthony Burgess's belongings is housed at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, UK. The holdings include: handwritten journals and diaries; over 8000 books from Burgess's personal library; manuscripts of novels, journalism and musical compositions; professional and private photographs dating from between 1918 and 1993; an extensive archive of sound recordings; Burgess's music collection; furniture; musical instruments including two of Burgess's pianos; and correspondence that includes letters from Angela Carter, Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon and other notable writers and publishers.[77] The International Anthony Burgess Foundation was established by Burgess's widow, Liana, in 2003.

Beginning in 1995, Burgess's widow bestowed a large archive of his papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin with several additions made in subsequent years. Comprising over 136 boxes, the archive includes typed and handwritten manuscripts, sheet music, correspondence, clippings, contracts and legal documents, appointment books, magazines, photographs, and personal effects. A substantial amount of unpublished and unproduced music compositions is included in the collection, along with a small number of audio recordings of Burgess's interviews and performances of his work.[78] Over 90 books from Burgess' library can also be found in the Ransom Center's holdings.[79] In 2014, the Ransom Center added the archive of Burgess's long-time agent Gabriele Pantucci, which also includes substantial manuscripts, sheet music, correspondence, and contracts.[80] Burgess's archive at the Ransom Center is supplemented by significant archives of artists Burgess admired including James Joyce, Graham Greene and D. H. Lawrence.

Honours

Commemoration

  • The International Anthony Burgess Foundation operates a performance space and café-bar at 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester.[82]
  • The University of Manchester unveiled a plaque in October 2012 that reads: "The University of Manchester commemorates Anthony Burgess, 1917–1993, Writer and Composer, Graduate, BA English 1940". It was the first monument to Burgess in the United Kingdom.[83]

Selected works

Novels

Notes

  1. ^ A British edition of A Clockwork Orange (Penguin 1972; ISBN 0-14-003219-3) and at least one American edition did have a glossary. A note added: "For help with the Russian, I am indebted to the kindness of my colleague Nora Montesinos and a number of correspondents."

References

  1. ^ David 1973, p. 181
  2. ^ . Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Archived from the original on 1 August 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  3. ^ See the essay "A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece" by Theodore Dalrymple in "Not With a Bang but a Whimper" (2008), pp. 135–149.
  4. ^ "Burgess... the Composer", The International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF).
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Ratcliffe, Michael (2004). "Wilson, John Burgess [Anthony Burgess] (1917–1993)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51526. Retrieved 20 June 2011. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ a b Lewis 2002, p. 67
  7. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 62
  8. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 64
  9. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 68
  10. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 70.
  11. ^ a b c Summerfield, Nicholas (December 2018). "Freedom and Anthony Burgess". The London Magazine. December/January 2019: 64–69.
  12. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 70–71.
  13. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 107.
  14. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 53–54
  15. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 57
  16. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 66
  17. ^ a b c Burgess 1982, pp. 17–18
  18. ^ Burgess 1982, p. 19
  19. ^ a b c . Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 8 June 2004. Archived from the original on 30 August 2005.
  20. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 97–98
  21. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 95
  22. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 109–110.
  23. ^ Mitang, Herbert (26 November 1993). "Anthony Burgess, 76, Dies; Man of Letters and Music". The New York Times (obituary). Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  24. ^ Little Wilson and Big God, Anthony Burgess, Vintage, 2002, p. 205.
  25. ^ The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, Andrew Biswell, Pan Macmillan, 2006, pp. 71–72.
  26. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 113
  27. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 117
  28. ^ Williams, Nigel (10 November 2002). "Not like clockwork". The Guardian. London, UK.
  29. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 107, 128
  30. ^ Colin Burrow (9 February 2006). "Not Quite Nasty". London Review of Books. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  31. ^ Biswell 2006
  32. ^ Anthony Burgess profile, britannica.com; accessed 26 November 2014.
  33. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 168
  34. ^ Anthony Burgess; Earl G. Ingersoll; Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). Conversations with Anthony Burgess. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. xv. ISBN 978-1-60473-096-8.
  35. ^ a b c d e f Tiger: The Life and Opinions of Anthony Burgess, geoffreygrigson.wordpress.com; accessed 26 November 2014.
  36. ^ "SAKMONGKOL AK47: The Life and Times of Dato Mokhtar bin Dato Sir Mahmud". Sakmongkol.blogspot.com. 15 June 2009. Retrieved 14 February 2010.
  37. ^ MCOBA – Pesentation(sic) by Old Boys at the 100 Years Prep School Centenary Celebration – 2013 Archived 26 November 2014 at archive.today, mcoba.org; accessed 26 November 2014.
  38. ^ Phillips, Paul (5 May 2004). . The International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Archived from the original on 12 April 2010.
  39. ^ Lewis 2002, pp. 223–224.
  40. ^ Aggeler, Geoffrey (Editor) (1986) Critical Essays on Anthony Burgess. G K Hall. p. 1; ISBN 0-8161-8757-6.
  41. ^ Little Wilson and Big God, Anthony Burgess, Random House, 2012, page 431.
  42. ^ Conversations with Anthony Burgess (2008) Ingersoll & Ingersoll ed. p. 180.
  43. ^ a b Conversations with Anthony Burgess (2008), Ingersoll & Ingersoll, pp. 151–152.
  44. ^ a b . Wiredforbooks.org. 19 September 1985. Archived from the original on 11 August 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  45. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 243
  46. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 280
  47. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 325
  48. ^ Biswell 2006, p. 237
  49. ^ Craik, Roger (January 2003). "'Bog or God' in A Clockwork Orange". ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. 16 (4): 51–54. doi:10.1080/08957690309598481. S2CID 162676494.
  50. ^ a b c d e f g "Obituary: Liana Burgess". The Daily Telegraph. 5 December 2007. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  51. ^ Biswell 2006, p. 4
  52. ^ a b c John Cullinan (2 December 1972). "Anthony Burgess, The Art of Fiction No. 48". The Paris Review (interview). No. 56. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  53. ^ Asprey, Matthew (July–August 2009), "Peripatetic Burgess" (PDF), End of the World Newsletter (3): 4–7, retrieved 31 August 2013
  54. ^ Biswell 2006, p. 356.
  55. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 12.
  56. ^ Quoted in Anthony McCarthy (2016), Ethical Sex, Fidelity Press.
  57. ^ Fitzgerald, Laurence (9 September 2015). "Anthony Burgess – Manchester's Neglected Hero?". I Love Manchester. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
  58. ^ "Anthony Burgess", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  59. ^ Walter Clemons, "Anthony Burgess: Pushing On", The New York Times Book Review, 29 November 1970, p. 2.
  60. ^ Shockley, Alan (2017). Music in the Words: Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth-Century Novel. Routledge. OCLC 1001968147. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  61. ^ Burgess, Anthony (Winter 1992). "Mozart and the Wolf Gang". The Wilson Quarterly. 16 (1): 113. JSTOR 40258243. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  62. ^ Metier records, release September 2013.
  63. ^ "Anthony Burgess". Desert Island Discs. BBC. Retrieved 12 July 2012.
  64. ^ McArthur, Tom, ed. (1992). The Oxford companion to the English language. Oxford University Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-19-214183-5. LCCN 92224249. OCLC 1150933959.
  65. ^ Rostand, Edmond; Anthony Burgess (1991). Cyrano de Bergerac, translated and adapted by Anthony Burgess (New ed.). Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-117-3.
  66. ^ Sophocles (1972). Oedipus the King. Translated by Anthony Burgess. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-0667-2.
  67. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 9.
  68. ^ "A Clockwork Orange On Stage".
  69. ^ Rogers, Stephen D (2011). A Dictionary of Made-Up Languages. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4405-2817-0. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  70. ^ Roberts, Adam; Anthony Burgess (2018). The Black Prince (New ed.). Unbound. ISBN 978-1-78352-647-5.
  71. ^ Picheta, Rob (25 April 2019). "Lost 'A Clockwork Orange' sequel discovered in author's archives". CNN Style.
  72. ^ Anthony Burgess, novel at the Encyclopædia Britannica.
  73. ^ The Neglected Books Page, neglectedbooks.com; accessed 26 November 2014.
  74. ^ Rubin, Steven Jay (1981). The James Bond films: a behind the scenes history. Westport, Conn.: Arlington House. ISBN 978-0-87000-523-7.
  75. ^ Field, Matthew (2015). Some kind of hero : 007 : the remarkable story of the James Bond films. Ajay Chowdhury. Stroud, Gloucestershire. ISBN 978-0-7509-6421-0. OCLC 930556527.
  76. ^ Barnes, Alan (2003). Kiss Kiss Bang! Bang! The Unofficial James Bond 007 Film Companion. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-8645-2.
  77. ^ "About the collections".
  78. ^ "Anthony Burgess: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  79. ^ "University of Texas Libraries / HRC". catalog.lib.utexas.edu. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  80. ^ "Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess A Preliminary Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  81. ^ "Companions of Literature". Royal Society of Literature.
  82. ^ "International Anthony Burgess Foundation Manchester". www.theskinny.co.uk.
  83. ^ . November 2012. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 23 November 2012.

Bibliography

Further reading

Selected studies

  • Geoffrey Aggeler, Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist (Alabama, 1979, ISBN 978-0-8173-7106-7).
  • Boytinck, Paul. Anthony Burgess: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide. New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1985. xxvi, 349 pp. Includes introduction, chronology and index, ISBN 978-0-8240-9135-4.
  • Anthony Burgess, "The Clockwork Condition". The New Yorker. June 4 & 11, 2012. pp. 69–76.
  • Samuel Coale, Anthony Burgess (New York, 1981, ISBN 978-0-8044-2124-9).
  • A. A. Devitis, Anthony Burgess (New York, 1972).
  • Carol M. Dix, Anthony Burgess (British Council, 1971. Northcote House Publishers, ISBN 978-0-582-01218-9).
  • Martine Ghosh-Schellhorn, Anthony Burgess: A Study in Character (Peter Lang AG, 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-5163-4).
  • Richard Mathews, The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess (Borgo Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-89370-227-4).
  • Paul Phillips, The Music of Anthony Burgess (1999).
  • Paul Phillips, "Anthony Burgess", New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001).
  • Paul Phillips, A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess (Manchester University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7190-7204-8).
  • John J. Stinson, Anthony Burgess Revisited (Boston, 1991, ISBN 978-0-8057-7000-1).

Collections

  • Burgess, Anthony (2020). Jonathan Mann (ed.). Collected Poems. Carcanet Press. ISBN 978-1-80017-013-1.
  • The largest collection of Burgess's papers and belongings, including literary and musical papers, is archived at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF) in Manchester.
  • Another large archival collection of Burgessiana is held at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin: Aggeler, Geoff; Birkett, Michael; Bottrall, Ronald; Burroughs, William S.; Caroline, Princess of Monaco; Greene, Graham; Joannon, Pierre; Jong, Erica; Kollek, Teddy. "Anthony Burgess: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 14 May 2019.; "Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess A Preliminary Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  • The Anthony Burgess Center of the University of Angers, with which Burgess's widow Liana was connected, also has some papers.
  • "Anthony Burgess fonds". McMaster University Library. The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections. Retrieved 5 January 2016.

External links

  • The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
  • The Anthony Burgess Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
  • The Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess at the Harry Ransom Center
  • The Anthony Burgess Center at the University of Angers
  • BBC TV interview
  • Burgess reads from A Clockwork Orange
  • Anthony Burgess at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

anthony, burgess, roman, catholic, bishop, anthony, joseph, burgess, 17th, century, cleric, anthony, burges, australian, medical, researcher, antony, burgess, john, wilson, frsl, ɜːr, february, 1917, november, 1993, published, under, name, english, writer, com. For the Roman Catholic bishop see Anthony Joseph Burgess For the 17th century cleric see Anthony Burges For the Australian medical researcher see Antony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson FRSL ˈ b ɜːr dʒ e s 2 25 February 1917 22 November 1993 who published under the name Anthony Burgess was an English writer and composer Anthony BurgessFRSLBurgess in 1986BornJohn Burgess Wilson 1917 02 25 25 February 1917Harpurhey Manchester EnglandDied22 November 1993 1993 11 22 aged 76 St John s Wood London EnglandPen nameAnthony Burgess John Burgess Wilson Joseph Kell 1 OccupationNovelist critic composer librettist playwright screenwriter essayist travel writer broadcaster translator linguist educationalistAlma materVictoria University of Manchester BA English Literature Period1956 1993Notable awardsCommandeur des Arts et des Lettres distinction of France Monegasque Commandeur de Merite Culturel Monaco Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature honorary degrees from St Andrews Birmingham and Manchester universitiesSpouseLlewela Isherwood Jones m 1942 died 1968 wbr Liana Macellari m 1968 wbr ChildrenPaolo Andrea 1964 2002 SignatureAlthough Burgess was primarily a comic writer his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best known novel 3 In 1971 it was adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book Burgess produced numerous other novels including the Enderby quartet and Earthly Powers He wrote librettos and screenplays including the 1977 TV mini series Jesus of Nazareth He worked as a literary critic for several publications including The Observer and The Guardian and wrote studies of classic writers notably James Joyce A versatile linguist Burgess lectured in phonetics and translated Cyrano de Bergerac Oedipus Rex and the opera Carmen among others Burgess also composed over 250 musical works he considered himself as much a composer as an author although he achieved considerably more success in writing 4 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early life 1 1 1 Music 1 1 2 University 1 1 3 Marriage 1 2 Military service 1 3 Early teaching career 1 4 Malaya 1 5 Brunei 1 6 Repatriate years 1 7 Tax exile 1 8 Death 2 Life in music 3 Linguistics 4 Work 4 1 Novels 4 2 Critical studies 4 3 Screenwriting 5 Archive 6 Honours 7 Commemoration 8 Selected works 8 1 Novels 9 Notes 10 References 10 1 Bibliography 11 Further reading 11 1 Selected studies 11 2 Collections 12 External linksBiography EditEarly life Edit In 1917 Burgess was born at 91 Carisbrook Street in Harpurhey a suburb of Manchester England to Catholic parents Joseph and Elizabeth Wilson 5 He described his background as lower middle class growing up during the Great Depression his parents who were shopkeepers were fairly well off as the demand for their tobacco and alcohol wares remained constant He was known in childhood as Jack Little Jack and Johnny Eagle 6 At his confirmation the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson He began using the pen name Anthony Burgess upon the publication of his 1956 novel Time for a Tiger 5 His mother Elizabeth nee Burgess died at the age of 30 at home on 19 November 1918 during the 1918 flu pandemic The causes listed on her death certificate were influenza acute pneumonia and cardiac failure His sister Muriel had died four days earlier on 15 November from influenza broncho pneumonia and cardiac failure aged eight 7 Burgess believed he was resented by his father Joseph Wilson for having survived when his mother and sister did not 8 After the death of his mother Burgess was raised by his maternal aunt Ann Bromley in Crumpsall with her two daughters During this time Burgess s father worked as a bookkeeper for a beef market by day and in the evening played piano at a public house in Miles Platting 6 After his father married the landlady of this pub Margaret Dwyer in 1922 Burgess was raised by his father and stepmother 9 By 1924 the couple had established a tobacconist and off licence business with four properties 10 Burgess was briefly employed at the tobacconist shop as a child 11 On 18 April 1938 Joseph Wilson died from cardiac failure pleurisy and influenza at the age of 55 leaving no inheritance despite his apparent business success 12 Burgess s stepmother died of a heart attack in 1940 13 Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored I was one despised Ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well dressed like myself 14 Burgess attended St Edmund s Elementary School before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School both Catholic schools in Moss Side 15 He later reflected When I went to school I was able to read At the Manchester elementary school I attended most of the children could not read so I was a little apart rather different from the rest 16 Good grades resulted in a place at Xaverian College 1928 37 5 Music Edit Burgess was indifferent to music until he heard on his home built radio a quite incredible flute solo which he characterised as sinuous exotic erotic and became spellbound 17 Eight minutes later the announcer told him he had been listening to Prelude a l apres midi d un faune by Claude Debussy He referred to this as a psychedelic moment a recognition of verbally inexpressible spiritual realities 17 When Burgess announced to his family that he wanted to be a composer they objected as there was no money in it 17 Music was not taught at his school but at the age of about 14 he taught himself to play the piano 18 University Edit Burgess had originally hoped to study music at university but the music department at the Victoria University of Manchester turned down his application because of poor grades in physics 19 Instead he studied English language and literature there between 1937 and 1940 graduating with a Bachelor of Arts His thesis concerned Marlowe s Doctor Faustus and he graduated with an upper second class honours which he found disappointing 20 When grading one of Burgess s term papers the historian A J P Taylor wrote Bright ideas insufficient to conceal lack of knowledge 21 Marriage Edit Burgess met Llewela Lynne Isherwood Jones at the university where she was studying economics politics and modern history graduating in 1942 with an upper second class 22 Burgess and Jones were married on 22 January 1942 5 She was daughter of secondary school headmaster Edward Jones 1886 1963 and Florence nee Jones 1867 1956 and reportedly claimed to be a distant relative of Christopher Isherwood although the Lewis and Biswell biographies dispute this 23 Per Burgess s own account it was not from his wife that the alleged connection to Christopher Isherwood originated Her father was an English Jones her mother a Welsh one Of Christopher Isherwood neither the Jones father or daughter had heard She was unliterary 24 Biswell identifies Burgess as the origin of the alleged relationship with Christopher Isherwood if the rumour of an Isherwood affiliation signifies anything it is that Burgess wanted people to believe that he was connected by marriage to another famous writer and notes that Llewela was not as Burgess claims in his autobiography a cousin of the writer Christopher Isherwood referring to a pedigree owned by the family Biswell observes that Llewela s father was descended from a female Isherwood which means going back four generations before encountering any Isherwoods making any connection at best tenuous and distant He also establishes that per official records Llewela s family name was Jones not as Burgess liked to suggest Isherwood Jones or Isherwood Jones 25 Military service Edit Burgess spent six weeks in 1940 as a British Army recruit in Eskbank before becoming a Nursing Orderly Class 3 in the Royal Army Medical Corps During his service he was unpopular and was involved in incidents such as knocking off a corporal s cap and polishing the floor of a corridor to make people slip 26 In 1941 Burgess was pursued by the Royal Military Police for desertion after overstaying his leave from Morpeth military base with his future bride Lynne The following year he asked to be transferred to the Army Educational Corps and despite his loathing of authority he was promoted to sergeant 27 During the blackout his pregnant wife Lynne was raped and assaulted by four American deserters perhaps as a result she lost the child 5 28 Burgess stationed at the time in Gibraltar was denied leave to see her 29 At his stationing in Gibraltar which he later wrote about in A Vision of Battlements he worked as a training college lecturer in speech and drama teaching alongside Ann McGlinn in German French and Spanish citation needed McGlinn s communist ideology would have a major influence on his later novel A Clockwork Orange Burgess played a key role in The British Way and Purpose programme designed to introduce members of the forces to the peacetime socialism of the post war years in Britain 30 He was an instructor for the Central Advisory Council for Forces Education of the Ministry of Education 5 Burgess s flair for languages was noticed by army intelligence and he took part in debriefings of Dutch expatriates and Free French who found refuge in Gibraltar during the war In the neighbouring Spanish town of La Linea de la Concepcion he was arrested for insulting General Franco but released from custody shortly after the incident 31 Early teaching career Edit Burgess left the army in 1946 with the rank of sergeant major For the next four years he was a lecturer in speech and drama at the Mid West School of Education near Wolverhampton and at the Bamber Bridge Emergency Teacher Training College near Preston 5 Burgess taught in the extramural department of Birmingham University 1946 50 32 In late 1950 he began working as a secondary school teacher at Banbury Grammar School now Banbury School teaching English literature In addition to his teaching duties he supervised sports and ran the school s drama society He organised a number of amateur theatrical events in his spare time These involved local people and students and included productions of T S Eliot s Sweeney Agonistes 33 Reports from his former students and colleagues indicate that he cared deeply about teaching 34 With financial assistance provided by Lynne s father the couple was able to put a down payment on a cottage in the village of Adderbury close to Banbury He named the cottage Little Gidding after one of Eliot s Four Quartets Burgess cut his journalistic teeth in Adderbury writing several articles for the local newspaper the Banbury Guardian 35 better source needed Malaya Edit The Malay College in Kuala Kangsar Perak where Burgess taught 1954 55 In 1954 Burgess joined the British Colonial Service as a teacher and education officer in Malaya initially stationed at Kuala Kangsar in Perak Here he taught at the Malay College now Malay College Kuala Kangsar MCKK modeled on English public school lines In addition to his teaching duties he was a housemaster in charge of students of the preparatory school who were housed at a Victorian mansion known as King s Pavilion 36 37 A variety of the music he wrote there was influenced by the country notably Sinfoni Melayu for orchestra and brass band which included cries of Merdeka independence from the audience No score however is extant 38 Burgess and his wife had occupied a noisy apartment where privacy was minimal and this caused resentment Following a dispute with the Malay College s principal about this Burgess was reposted to the Malay Teachers Training College at Kota Bharu Kelantan 39 Burgess attained fluency in Malay spoken and written achieving distinction in the examinations in the language set by the Colonial Office He was rewarded with a salary increase for his proficiency in the language He devoted some of his free time in Malaya to creative writing as a sort of gentlemanly hobby because I knew there wasn t any money in it and published his first novels Time for a Tiger The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East 40 These became known as The Malayan Trilogy and were later published in one volume as The Long Day Wanes Brunei Edit Burgess was an education officer at the Malay Teachers Training College 1955 and 1958 After a brief period of leave in Britain during 1958 Burgess took up a further Eastern post this time at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin College in Bandar Seri Begawan Brunei Brunei had been a British protectorate since 1888 and was not to achieve independence until 1984 In the sultanate Burgess sketched the novel that when it was published in 1961 was to be entitled Devil of a State and although it dealt with Brunei for libel reasons the action had to be transposed to an imaginary East African territory similar to Zanzibar named Dunia In his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God 1987 Burgess wrote 41 This novel was is about Brunei which was renamed Naraka Malay Sanskrit for hell Little invention was needed to contrive a large cast of unbelievable characters and a number of interwoven plots Though completed in 1958 the work was not published until 1961 for what it was worth it was made a choice of the book society Heinemann my publisher was doubtful about publishing it it might be libellous I had to change the setting from Brunei to an East African one Heinemann was right to be timorous In early 1958 The Enemy in the Blanket appeared and at once provoked a libel suit About this time Burgess collapsed in a Brunei classroom while teaching history and was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour 19 Burgess was given just a year to live prompting him to write several novels to get money to provide for his widow 19 He gave a different account however to Jeremy Isaacs in a Face to Face interview on the BBC The Late Show 21 March 1989 He said Looking back now I see that I was driven out of the Colonial Service I think possibly for political reasons that were disguised as clinical reasons 42 He alluded to this in an interview with Don Swaim explaining that his wife Lynne had said something obscene to the Duke of Edinburgh during an official visit and the colonial authorities turned against him 43 44 He had already earned their displeasure he told Swaim by writing articles in the newspaper in support of the revolutionary opposition party the Parti Rakyat Brunei and for his friendship with its leader Dr Azahari 43 44 Burgess biographers attribute the incident to the author s notorious mythomania Geoffrey Grigson writes 35 He was however suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking and associated poor nutrition of the often oppressive south east Asian climate of chronic constipation and of overwork and professional disappointment As he put it the scions of the sultans and of the elite in Brunei did not wish to be taught because the free flowing abundance of oil guaranteed their income and privileged status He may also have wished for a pretext to abandon teaching and get going full time as a writer having made a late start Repatriate years Edit Burgess was invalided home in 1959 45 and relieved of his position in Brunei He spent some time in the neurological ward of a London hospital see The Doctor is Sick where he underwent cerebral tests that found no illness On discharge benefiting from a sum of money which Lynne Burgess had inherited from her father together with their savings built up over six years in the East he decided to become a full time writer The couple lived first in an apartment in Hove near Brighton They later moved to a semi detached house called Applegarth in Etchingham about four miles from Bateman s where Rudyard Kipling had lived in Burwash and one mile from the Robertsbridge home of Malcolm Muggeridge 46 Upon the death of Burgess s father in law the couple used their inheritance to decamp to a terraced town house in Chiswick This provided convenient access to the BBC Television Centre where he later became a frequent guest During these years Burgess became a regular drinking partner of the novelist William S Burroughs Their meetings took place in London and Tangiers 47 A sea voyage the couple took with the Baltic Line from Tilbury to Leningrad in June 1961 48 resulted in the novel Honey for the Bears He wrote in his autobiographical You ve Had Your Time 1990 that in re learning Russian at this time he found inspiration for the Russian based slang Nadsat that he created for A Clockwork Orange going on to note I would resist to the limit any publisher s demand that a glossary be provided 49 Notes 1 Liana Macellari an Italian translator twelve years younger than Burgess came across his novels Inside Mr Enderby and A Clockwork Orange while writing about English fiction 50 The two first met in 1963 over lunch in Chiswick and began an affair In 1964 Liana gave birth to Burgess s son Paolo Andrea The affair was hidden from Burgess s alcoholic wife whom he refused to leave for fear of offending his cousin by Burgess s stepmother Margaret Dwyer Wilson George Dwyer the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds 50 Lynne Burgess died from cirrhosis of the liver on 20 March 1968 5 Six months later in September 1968 Burgess married Liana acknowledging her four year old boy as his own although the birth certificate listed Roy Halliday Liana s former partner as the father 50 Paolo Andrea also known as Andrew Burgess Wilson died in London in 2002 aged 37 51 Liana died in 2007 50 Tax exile Edit Appearing on British television discussion programme After Dark What is Sex For in 1988 Burgess was a Conservative though as he clarified in an interview with The Paris Review his political views could be considered a kind of anarchism since his ideal of a Catholic Jacobite imperial monarch was not practicable 52 a lapsed Catholic and monarchist harbouring a distaste for all republics He believed socialism for the most part was ridiculous but did concede that socialised medicine is a priority in any civilised country today 52 To avoid the 90 tax the family would have incurred because of their high income they left Britain and toured Europe in a Bedford Dormobile motor home During their travels through France and across the Alps Burgess wrote in the back of the van as Liana drove In this period he wrote novels and produced film scripts for Lew Grade and Franco Zeffirelli 50 His first place of residence after leaving England was Lija Malta 1968 70 The negative reaction from a lecture that Burgess delivered to an audience of Catholic priests in Malta precipitated a move by the couple to Italy 50 after the Maltese government confiscated the property 11 He would go on to fictionalise these events in Earthly Powers a decade later 11 The Burgesses maintained a flat in Rome a country house in Bracciano and a property in Montalbuccio On hearing rumours of a mafia plot to kidnap Paolo Andrea while the family was staying in Rome Burgess decided to move to Monaco in 1975 53 Burgess was also motivated to move to the tax haven of Monaco as the country did not levy income tax and widows were exempt from death duties a form of taxation on their husband s estates 54 The couple also had a villa in France at Callian Var Provence 55 Burgess lived for two years in the United States working as a visiting professor at Princeton University with the creative writing program 1970 and as a distinguished professor at the City College of New York 1972 At City College he was a close colleague and friend of Joseph Heller He went on to teach creative writing at Columbia University and was writer in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1969 and at the University at Buffalo 1976 He lectured on the novel at the University of Iowa in 1975 Eventually he settled in Monaco in 1976 where he was active in the local community becoming a co founder in 1984 of the Princess Grace Irish Library a centre for Irish cultural studies In May 1988 Burgess made an extended appearance with among others Andrea Dworkin on the episode What Is Sex For of discussion programme After Dark He spoke at one point about divorce 56 Liking involves no discipline love does A marriage say that lasts twenty years or more is a kind of civilisation a kind of microcosm it develops its own language its own semiotics its own slang its own shorthand sex is part of it part of the semiotics To destroy wantonly such a relationship is like destroying a whole civilisation Although Burgess lived not far from Graham Greene whose house was in Antibes Greene became aggrieved shortly before his death by comments in newspaper articles by Burgess and broke off all contact 35 Gore Vidal revealed in his 2006 memoir Point to Point Navigation that Greene disapproved of Burgess s appearance on various European television stations to discuss his Burgess books 35 Vidal recounts that Greene apparently regarded a willingness to appear on television as something that ought to be beneath a writer s dignity 35 He talks about his books Vidal quotes an exasperated Greene as saying 35 During this time Burgess spent much time at his chalet two kilometres 1 1 4 miles outside Lugano Switzerland Death Edit Burgess s grave marker at the Columbarium in Monaco s cemetery Burgess wrote I shall die somewhere in the Mediterranean lands with an inaccurate obituary in the Nice Matin unmourned soon forgotten 57 In fact Burgess died in the country of his birth He returned to Twickenham an outer suburb of London where he owned a house to await death Burgess died on 22 November 1993 from lung cancer at the Hospital of St John amp St Elizabeth in London His ashes were inurned at the Monaco Cemetery The epitaph on Burgess s marble memorial stone reads Abba Abba which means Father father in Aramaic Arabic Hebrew and other Semitic languages and is pronounced by Christ during his agony in Gethsemane Mark 14 36 as he prays God to spare him It is also the title of Burgess s 22nd novel concerning the death of John Keats Eulogies at his memorial service at St Paul s Covent Garden London in 1994 were delivered by the journalist Auberon Waugh and the novelist William Boyd citation needed The Times obituary heralded the author as a great moralist 58 His estate was worth US 3 million and included a large European property portfolio of houses and apartments 50 Life in music EditAn accomplished musician Burgess composed regularly throughout his life and once said 59 I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels instead of a novelist who writes music on the side Several of his pieces were broadcast during his lifetime on BBC Radio His Symphony No 3 in C was premiered by the University of Iowa orchestra in Iowa City in 1975 Burgess described his Sinfoni Melayu as an attempt to combine the musical elements of the country Malaya into a synthetic language which called on native drums and xylophones The structure of Napoleon Symphony A Novel in Four Movements 1974 was modelled on Beethoven s Eroica symphony 60 while Mozart and the Wolf Gang 1991 mirrors the sound and rhythm of Mozartian composition among other things attempting a fictional representation of Symphony No 40 61 Beethoven s Symphony No 9 features prominently in A Clockwork Orange and in Stanley Kubrick s film version of the novel Many of his unpublished compositions are listed in This Man and Music He wrote a good deal of music for recorder as his son played the instrument Several of his pieces for recorder and piano including the Sonata No 1 Sonatina and Tre Pezzetti have been included on a major CD release from recorder player John Turner and pianist Harvey Davies the double album also includes related music from 15 other composers and is titled Anthony Burgess The Man and his Music 62 Burgess produced a translation of Meilhac and Halevy s libretto to Bizet s Carmen which was performed by the English National Opera and wrote for the 1973 Broadway musical Cyrano using his own adaptation of the original Rostand play as his basis He created Blooms of Dublin in 1982 an operetta based on James Joyce s Ulysses televised for the BBC and wrote a libretto for Weber s Oberon performed by the Glasgow based Scottish Opera citation needed On the BBC s Desert Island Discs radio programme in 1966 63 Burgess chose as his favourite music Purcell s Rejoice in the Lord Alway Bach s Goldberg Variations No 13 Elgar s Symphony No 1 in A flat major Wagner s Walter s Trial Song from Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg Debussy s Fetes from Nocturnes Lambert s The Rio Grande Walton s Symphony No 1 in B flat minor and Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge Further information Anthony Burgess bibliography Selected musical compositionsLinguistics Edit Burgess s linguistic training wrote Raymond Chapman and Tom McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language is shown in dialogue enriched by distinctive pronunciations and the niceties of register 64 During his years in Malaya and after he had mastered Jawi the Arabic script adapted for Malay Burgess taught himself the Persian language after which he produced a translation of Eliot s The Waste Land into Persian unpublished He worked on an anthology of the best of English literature translated into Malay which failed to achieve publication Burgess s published translations include two versions of Cyrano de Bergerac 65 Oedipus the King 66 and Carmen Burgess s interest in language was reflected in the invented Anglo Russian teen slang of A Clockwork Orange Nadsat and in the movie Quest for Fire 1981 for which he invented a prehistoric language Ulam for the characters His interest is reflected in his characters In The Doctor is Sick Dr Edwin Spindrift is a lecturer in linguistics who escapes from a hospital ward which is peopled as the critic Saul Maloff put it in a review with brain cases who happily exemplify varieties of English speech Burgess who had lectured on phonetics at the University of Birmingham in the late 1940s investigates the field of linguistics in Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air The depth of Burgess s multilingual proficiency came under discussion in Roger Lewis s 2002 biography Lewis claimed that during production in Malaysia of the BBC documentary A Kind of Failure 1982 Burgess s supposedly fluent Malay was not understood by waitresses at a restaurant where they were filming It was claimed that the documentary s director deliberately kept these moments intact in the film to expose Burgess s linguistic pretensions A letter from David Wallace that appeared in the magazine of the London Independent on Sunday newspaper on 25 November 2002 shed light on the affair Wallace s letter read in part the tale was inaccurate It tells of Burgess the great linguist bellowing Malay at a succession of Malayan waitresses but unable to make himself understood The source of this tale was a 20 year old BBC documentary The suggestion was that the director left the scene in in order to poke fun at the great author Not so and I can be sure as I was that director The story as seen on television made it clear that Burgess knew that these waitresses were not Malay It was a Chinese restaurant and Burgess s point was that the ethnic Chinese had little time for the government enforced national language Bahasa Malaysia Malay Burgess may well have had an accent but he did speak the language it was the girls in question who did not Lewis may not have been fully aware of the fact that a quarter of Malaysia s population is made up of Hokkien and Cantonese speaking Chinese However Malay had been installed as the National Language with the passing of the Language Act of 1967 By 1982 all national primary and secondary schools in Malaysia would have been teaching with Bahasa Melayu as a base language see Harold Crouch Government and Society in Malaysia Ithaca and London Cornell University Press 1996 Work EditNovels Edit This section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Anthony Burgess news newspapers books scholar JSTOR November 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message His Malayan trilogy The Long Day Wanes was Burgess s first published fiction Its three books are Time for a Tiger The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East Devil of a State is a follow on to the trilogy set in a fictionalised version of Brunei It was Burgess s ambition to become the true fictional expert on Malaya citation needed In these works Burgess was working in the tradition established by Kipling for British India and Conrad and Maugham for Southeast Asia Burgess operated more in the mode of Orwell who had a good command of Urdu and Burmese necessary for Orwell s work as a police officer and Kipling who spoke Hindi having learnt it as a child Like many of his fellow English expatriates in Asia Burgess had excellent spoken and written command of his operative language s both as a novelist and as a speaker including Malay Burgess s repatriate years c 1960 1969 produced Enderby and The Right to an Answer which touches on the theme of death and dying and One Hand Clapping a satire on the vacuity of popular culture The Worm and the Ring 1961 had to be withdrawn from circulation under the threat of libel action from one of Burgess s former colleagues a school secretary 67 His dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962 It was inspired initially by an incident during the London Blitz of World War II in which his wife Lynne was robbed assaulted and violated by deserters from the US Army in London during the blackout The event may have contributed to her subsequent miscarriage The book was an examination of free will and morality The young anti hero Alex captured after a short career of violence and mayhem undergoes a course of aversion therapy treatment to curb his violent tendencies This results in making him defenceless against other people and unable to enjoy some of his favourite music that besides violence had been an intense pleasure for him In the non fiction book Flame into Being 1985 Burgess described A Clockwork Orange as a jeu d esprit knocked off for money in three weeks It became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence He added the film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die In a 1980 BBC interview Burgess distanced himself from the novel and cinematic adaptations Near the time of publication the final chapter was cut from the American edition of the book citation needed Burgess had written A Clockwork Orange with 21 chapters meaning to match the age of majority 21 is the symbol of human maturity or used to be since at 21 you got to vote and assumed adult responsibility Burgess wrote in a foreword for a 1986 edition Needing money and thinking that the publisher was being charitable in accepting the work at all Burgess accepted the deal and allowed A Clockwork Orange to be published in the US with the twenty first chapter omitted Stanley Kubrick s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American edition and thus helped to perpetuate the loss of the last chapter In 2021 The International Anthony Burgess Foundation premiered a webpage cataloging various stage productions of A Clockwork Orange from around the world 68 In Martin Seymour Smith s Novels and Novelists A Guide to the World of Fiction Burgess related that he would often prepare a synopsis with a name list before beginning a project Seymour Smith wrote 69 Burgess believes overplanning is fatal to creativity and regards his unconscious mind and the act of writing itself as indispensable guides He does not produce a draft of a whole novel but prefers to get one page finished before he goes on to the next which involves a good deal of revision and correction Nothing Like the Sun is a fictional recreation of Shakespeare s love life and an examination of the supposedly partly syphilitic sources of the bard s imaginative vision The novel which drew on Edgar I Fripp s 1938 biography Shakespeare Man and artist won critical acclaim and placed Burgess among the first rank novelists of his generation M F 1971 was listed by the writer himself as one of the works of which he was most proud Beard s Roman Women was revealing on a personal level dealing with the death of his first wife his bereavement and the affair that led to his second marriage In Napoleon Symphony Burgess brought Bonaparte to life by shaping the novel s structure to Beethoven s Eroica symphony The novel contains a portrait of an Arab and Muslim society under occupation by a Christian western power Egypt by Catholic France In the 1980s religious themes began to feature heavily The Kingdom of the Wicked Man of Nazareth Earthly Powers Though Burgess lapsed from Catholicism early in his youth the influence of the Catholic training and worldview remained strong in his work all his life This is notable in the discussion of free will in A Clockwork Orange and in the apocalyptic vision of devastating changes in the Catholic Church due to what can be understood as Satanic influence in Earthly Powers 1980 Burgess kept working through his final illness and was writing on his deathbed The late novel Any Old Iron is a generational saga of two families one Russian Welsh the other Jewish encompassing the sinking of the Titanic World War I the Russian Revolution the Spanish Civil War World War II the early years of the State of Israel and the rediscovery of Excalibur A Dead Man in Deptford about Christopher Marlowe is a companion novel to Nothing Like the Sun The verse novel Byrne was published posthumously Burgess announced in a 1972 interview that he was writing a novel about the Black Prince which incorporated John Dos Passos s narrative techniques although he never finished writing it 52 After Burgess s death English writer Adam Roberts completed the novel and it was published in 2018 70 In 2019 a previously unpublished analysis of A Clockwork Orange was discovered titled The Clockwork Condition 71 It is structured as Burgess s philosophical musings on the novel that won him so much acclaim Critical studies Edit Burgess started his career as a critic His English Literature A Survey for Students was aimed at newcomers to the subject He followed this with The Novel To day Longmans 1963 and The Novel Now A Student s Guide to Contemporary Fiction New York W W Norton and Company 1967 He wrote the Joyce studies Here Comes Everybody An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader also published as Re Joyce and Joysprick An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce Also published was A Shorter Finnegans Wake Burgess s abridgement His 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the novel under Novel the 72 is regarded by whom as a classic of the genre Burgess wrote full length critical studies of William Shakespeare Ernest Hemingway and D H Lawrence as well as Ninety nine Novels The Best in English since 1939 73 Screenwriting Edit Burgess wrote the screenplays for Moses the Lawgiver Gianfranco De Bosio 1974 Jesus of Nazareth Franco Zeffirelli 1977 and A D Stuart Cooper 1985 Burgess was co writer of the script for the TV series Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson 1980 The film treatments he produced include Amundsen Attila The Black Prince Cyrus the Great Dawn Chorus The Dirty Tricks of Bertoldo Eternal Life Onassis Puma Samson and Delilah Schreber The Sexual Habits of the English Middle Class Shah That Man Freud and Uncle Ludwig Burgess devised a Stone Age language for La Guerre du Feu Quest for Fire Jean Jacques Annaud 1981 Burgess wrote many unpublished scripts including Will or The Bawdy Bard about Shakespeare based on the novel Nothing Like The Sun Encouraged by the success of Tremor of Intent a parody of James Bond adventures Burgess wrote a screenplay for The Spy Who Loved Me featuring characters from and a similar tone to the novel 74 It had Bond fighting the criminal organization CHAOS in Singapore to try to stop an assassination of Queen Elizabeth II using surgically implanted bombs at Sydney Opera House It was described as an outrageous medley of sadism hypnosis acupuncture and international terrorism 75 His screenplay was rejected although the huge submarine silo seen in the finished film was reportedly Burgess s inspiration 76 Archive EditThe largest archive of Anthony Burgess s belongings is housed at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester UK The holdings include handwritten journals and diaries over 8000 books from Burgess s personal library manuscripts of novels journalism and musical compositions professional and private photographs dating from between 1918 and 1993 an extensive archive of sound recordings Burgess s music collection furniture musical instruments including two of Burgess s pianos and correspondence that includes letters from Angela Carter Graham Greene Thomas Pynchon and other notable writers and publishers 77 The International Anthony Burgess Foundation was established by Burgess s widow Liana in 2003 Beginning in 1995 Burgess s widow bestowed a large archive of his papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin with several additions made in subsequent years Comprising over 136 boxes the archive includes typed and handwritten manuscripts sheet music correspondence clippings contracts and legal documents appointment books magazines photographs and personal effects A substantial amount of unpublished and unproduced music compositions is included in the collection along with a small number of audio recordings of Burgess s interviews and performances of his work 78 Over 90 books from Burgess library can also be found in the Ransom Center s holdings 79 In 2014 the Ransom Center added the archive of Burgess s long time agent Gabriele Pantucci which also includes substantial manuscripts sheet music correspondence and contracts 80 Burgess s archive at the Ransom Center is supplemented by significant archives of artists Burgess admired including James Joyce Graham Greene and D H Lawrence Honours EditBurgess garnered the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres distinction of France and became a Monegasque Commandeur de Merite Culturel Monaco He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature In 1991 he was awarded the title of Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature 81 He took honorary degrees from St Andrews Birmingham and Manchester universities Earthly Powers was shortlisted for but failed to win the 1980 English Booker Prize for fiction the prize went to William Golding for Rites of Passage Commemoration EditThe International Anthony Burgess Foundation operates a performance space and cafe bar at 3 Cambridge Street Manchester 82 The University of Manchester unveiled a plaque in October 2012 that reads The University of Manchester commemorates Anthony Burgess 1917 1993 Writer and Composer Graduate BA English 1940 It was the first monument to Burgess in the United Kingdom 83 Selected works EditMain article Anthony Burgess bibliography Novels Edit Time for a Tiger 1956 Volume 1 of the Malayan trilogy The Long Day Wanes The Enemy in the Blanket 1958 Volume 2 of the trilogy Beds in the East 1959 Volume 3 of the trilogy The Right to an Answer 1960 The Doctor is Sick 1960 The Worm and the Ring 1961 Devil of a State 1961 as Joseph Kell One Hand Clapping 1961 A Clockwork Orange 1962 2008 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award The Wanting Seed 1962 Honey for the Bears 1963 as Joseph Kell Inside Mr Enderby 1963 Volume 1 of the Enderby quartet The Eve of St Venus 1964 Nothing Like the Sun A Story of Shakespeare s Love Life 1964 A Vision of Battlements 1965 Tremor of Intent An Eschatological Spy Novel 1966 Enderby Outside 1968 Volume 2 of the Enderby quartet M F 1971 Napoleon Symphony A Novel in Four Movements 1974 The Clockwork Testament or Enderby s End 1974 Volume 3 of the Enderby quartet Beard s Roman Women 1976 Abba Abba 1977 1985 1978 Man of Nazareth based on his screenplay for Jesus of Nazareth 1979 Earthly Powers 1980 The End of the World News An Entertainment 1982 Enderby s Dark Lady or No End of Enderby 1984 Volume 4 of the Enderby quartet The Kingdom of the Wicked 1985 The Pianoplayers 1986 Any Old Iron 1988 Mozart and the Wolf Gang 1991 A Dead Man in Deptford 1993 Byrne A Novel in verse 1995 Notes Edit A British edition of A Clockwork Orange Penguin 1972 ISBN 0 14 003219 3 and at least one American edition did have a glossary A note added For help with the Russian I am indebted to the kindness of my colleague Nora Montesinos and a number of correspondents References Edit David 1973 p 181 anthony burgess Definition pictures pronunciation and usage notes Oxford Advanced Learner s Dictionary Archived from the original on 1 August 2019 Retrieved 5 August 2018 See the essay A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece by Theodore Dalrymple in Not With a Bang but a Whimper 2008 pp 135 149 Burgess the Composer The International Anthony Burgess Foundation IABF a b c d e f g h Ratcliffe Michael 2004 Wilson John Burgess Anthony Burgess 1917 1993 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 51526 Retrieved 20 June 2011 Subscription or UK public library membership required a b Lewis 2002 p 67 Lewis 2002 p 62 Lewis 2002 p 64 Lewis 2002 p 68 Lewis 2002 p 70 a b c Summerfield Nicholas December 2018 Freedom and Anthony Burgess The London Magazine December January 2019 64 69 Lewis 2002 pp 70 71 Lewis 2002 p 107 Lewis 2002 pp 53 54 Lewis 2002 p 57 Lewis 2002 p 66 a b c Burgess 1982 pp 17 18 Burgess 1982 p 19 a b c Anthony Burgess 1917 1993 Biographical Sketch Harry Ransom Center University of Texas Austin 8 June 2004 Archived from the original on 30 August 2005 Lewis 2002 pp 97 98 Lewis 2002 p 95 Lewis 2002 pp 109 110 Mitang Herbert 26 November 1993 Anthony Burgess 76 Dies Man of Letters and Music The New York Times obituary Retrieved 31 August 2013 Little Wilson and Big God Anthony Burgess Vintage 2002 p 205 The Real Life of Anthony Burgess Andrew Biswell Pan Macmillan 2006 pp 71 72 Lewis 2002 p 113 Lewis 2002 p 117 Williams Nigel 10 November 2002 Not like clockwork The Guardian London UK Lewis 2002 pp 107 128 Colin Burrow 9 February 2006 Not Quite Nasty London Review of Books Retrieved 2 May 2010 Biswell 2006 Anthony Burgess profile britannica com accessed 26 November 2014 Lewis 2002 p 168 Anthony Burgess Earl G Ingersoll Mary C Ingersoll 2008 Conversations with Anthony Burgess Univ Press of Mississippi p xv ISBN 978 1 60473 096 8 a b c d e f Tiger The Life and Opinions of Anthony Burgess geoffreygrigson wordpress com accessed 26 November 2014 SAKMONGKOL AK47 The Life and Times of Dato Mokhtar bin Dato Sir Mahmud Sakmongkol blogspot com 15 June 2009 Retrieved 14 February 2010 MCOBA Pesentation sic by Old Boys at the 100 Years Prep School Centenary Celebration 2013 Archived 26 November 2014 at archive today mcoba org accessed 26 November 2014 Phillips Paul 5 May 2004 1954 59 The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Archived from the original on 12 April 2010 Lewis 2002 pp 223 224 Aggeler Geoffrey Editor 1986 Critical Essays on Anthony Burgess G K Hall p 1 ISBN 0 8161 8757 6 Little Wilson and Big God Anthony Burgess Random House 2012 page 431 Conversations with Anthony Burgess 2008 Ingersoll amp Ingersoll ed p 180 a b Conversations with Anthony Burgess 2008 Ingersoll amp Ingersoll pp 151 152 a b 1985 interview with Anthony Burgess audio Wiredforbooks org 19 September 1985 Archived from the original on 11 August 2011 Retrieved 8 August 2011 Lewis 2002 p 243 Lewis 2002 p 280 Lewis 2002 p 325 Biswell 2006 p 237 Craik Roger January 2003 Bog or God in A Clockwork Orange ANQ A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews 16 4 51 54 doi 10 1080 08957690309598481 S2CID 162676494 a b c d e f g Obituary Liana Burgess The Daily Telegraph 5 December 2007 Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 Retrieved 30 April 2015 Biswell 2006 p 4 a b c John Cullinan 2 December 1972 Anthony Burgess The Art of Fiction No 48 The Paris Review interview No 56 Retrieved 21 December 2021 Asprey Matthew July August 2009 Peripatetic Burgess PDF End of the World Newsletter 3 4 7 retrieved 31 August 2013 Biswell 2006 p 356 Lewis 2002 p 12 Quoted in Anthony McCarthy 2016 Ethical Sex Fidelity Press Fitzgerald Laurence 9 September 2015 Anthony Burgess Manchester s Neglected Hero I Love Manchester Retrieved 26 October 2018 Anthony Burgess Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Walter Clemons Anthony Burgess Pushing On The New York Times Book Review 29 November 1970 p 2 Shockley Alan 2017 Music in the Words Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth Century Novel Routledge OCLC 1001968147 Retrieved 22 August 2022 Burgess Anthony Winter 1992 Mozart and the Wolf Gang The Wilson Quarterly 16 1 113 JSTOR 40258243 Retrieved 22 August 2022 Metier records release September 2013 Anthony Burgess Desert Island Discs BBC Retrieved 12 July 2012 McArthur Tom ed 1992 The Oxford companion to the English language Oxford University Press p 167 ISBN 978 0 19 214183 5 LCCN 92224249 OCLC 1150933959 Rostand Edmond Anthony Burgess 1991 Cyrano de Bergerac translated and adapted by Anthony Burgess New ed Nick Hern Books ISBN 978 1 85459 117 3 Sophocles 1972 Oedipus the King Translated by Anthony Burgess University of Minnesota Press ISBN 978 0 8166 0667 2 Lewis 2002 p 9 A Clockwork Orange On Stage Rogers Stephen D 2011 A Dictionary of Made Up Languages Simon and Schuster ISBN 978 1 4405 2817 0 Retrieved 3 May 2020 Roberts Adam Anthony Burgess 2018 The Black Prince New ed Unbound ISBN 978 1 78352 647 5 Picheta Rob 25 April 2019 Lost A Clockwork Orange sequel discovered in author s archives CNN Style Anthony Burgess novel at the Encyclopaedia Britannica The Neglected Books Page neglectedbooks com accessed 26 November 2014 Rubin Steven Jay 1981 The James Bond films a behind the scenes history Westport Conn Arlington House ISBN 978 0 87000 523 7 Field Matthew 2015 Some kind of hero 007 the remarkable story of the James Bond films Ajay Chowdhury Stroud Gloucestershire ISBN 978 0 7509 6421 0 OCLC 930556527 Barnes Alan 2003 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang The Unofficial James Bond 007 Film Companion Batsford ISBN 978 0 7134 8645 2 About the collections Anthony Burgess An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Retrieved 21 December 2021 University of Texas Libraries HRC catalog lib utexas edu Retrieved 3 November 2017 Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess A Preliminary Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Retrieved 14 May 2019 Companions of Literature Royal Society of Literature International Anthony Burgess Foundation Manchester www theskinny co uk Your Manchester Online November 2012 Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 Retrieved 23 November 2012 Bibliography Edit Biswell Andrew 2006 The Real Life of Anthony Burgess Picador ISBN 978 0 330 48171 7 Burgess Anthony 1982 This Man And Music McGraw Hill ISBN 978 0 07 008964 8 David Beverley July 1973 Anthony Burgess A Checklist 1956 1971 Twentieth Century Literature 19 3 181 88 JSTOR 440916 Lewis Roger 2002 Anthony Burgess Faber and Faber ISBN 978 0 571 20492 2Further reading EditSelected studies Edit Geoffrey Aggeler Anthony Burgess The Artist as Novelist Alabama 1979 ISBN 978 0 8173 7106 7 Boytinck Paul Anthony Burgess An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide New York London Garland Publishing 1985 xxvi 349 pp Includes introduction chronology and index ISBN 978 0 8240 9135 4 Anthony Burgess The Clockwork Condition The New Yorker June 4 amp 11 2012 pp 69 76 Samuel Coale Anthony Burgess New York 1981 ISBN 978 0 8044 2124 9 A A Devitis Anthony Burgess New York 1972 Carol M Dix Anthony Burgess British Council 1971 Northcote House Publishers ISBN 978 0 582 01218 9 Martine Ghosh Schellhorn Anthony Burgess A Study in Character Peter Lang AG 1986 ISBN 978 3 8204 5163 4 Richard Mathews The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess Borgo Press 1990 ISBN 978 0 89370 227 4 Paul Phillips The Music of Anthony Burgess 1999 Paul Phillips Anthony Burgess New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2nd ed 2001 Paul Phillips A Clockwork Counterpoint The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess Manchester University Press 2010 ISBN 978 0 7190 7204 8 John J Stinson Anthony Burgess Revisited Boston 1991 ISBN 978 0 8057 7000 1 Collections Edit Burgess Anthony 2020 Jonathan Mann ed Collected Poems Carcanet Press ISBN 978 1 80017 013 1 The largest collection of Burgess s papers and belongings including literary and musical papers is archived at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation IABF in Manchester Another large archival collection of Burgessiana is held at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin Aggeler Geoff Birkett Michael Bottrall Ronald Burroughs William S Caroline Princess of Monaco Greene Graham Joannon Pierre Jong Erica Kollek Teddy Anthony Burgess An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Retrieved 14 May 2019 Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess A Preliminary Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Retrieved 14 May 2019 The Anthony Burgess Center of the University of Angers with which Burgess s widow Liana was connected also has some papers Anthony Burgess fonds McMaster University Library The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections Retrieved 5 January 2016 External links Edit Biography portalThe International Anthony Burgess Foundation The Anthony Burgess Papers at the Harry Ransom Center The Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess at the Harry Ransom Center The Anthony Burgess Center at the University of Angers BBC TV interview Burgess reads from A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Anthony Burgess at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Data from Wikidata Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Anthony Burgess amp oldid 1128816554, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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