Biography Essay

Widely regarded as one of the foremost contemporary fiction writers in English, Anthony Burgess began his long and prolific literary career while living in Malaya during the late 1950s. In 1949 he had written a fictional account of his wartime experiences in Gibraltar, but this did not appear until 1965 as A Vision of Battlements. He started writing fiction during his Malayan years "as a sort of gentlemanly hobby, because I knew there wasn't any money in it." At the time, he was an education officer with the British Colonial Service, and the fiction he was writing included realistic portrayals of actual events and personalities. Since it was regarded as indiscreet for one in his position to have such fiction published under his own name, he adopted the nom de plume "Anthony Burgess," which consists of his confirmation name and his mother's maiden name. His full name, which...