Golding, Louis, 1895-1958

Louis Golding was a popular and prolific British author known for his novels and travel books. Born in Manchester, his studies at Oxford were interrupted by World War I. Deemed unfit for army duty, his love of travel was initiated when he was sent by the YMCA to Greece. After the war, he travelled regularly, and found success as a novelist and travel writer, chiefly of the Middle East. His travel books aren't mere guides; through fiction, poems, and short sketches, he effectively captures the spirit of a place and its people, heightened by his own enthusiasm. A lecturer, poet, journalist, literary critic, and Hollywood screenwriter, he also became a spokesman for British Jews, and an important opponent of anti-Semitism.

English novelist and essayist.

Louis Golding (1895-1958), born in Manchester, England, is best known for his novels Magnolia Street (1932) and the five-volume series, Tales of the Silver Sisters, novels that examine twentieth-century Jewish life in Western Europe.

Louis Golding was one of the most successful Anglo-Jewish authors of post-World War I England. He was born in Manchester of Jewish parents who had recently emigrated from Cherkassy, in the Ukrainian Soviet Union. After graduating from Manchester Grammar School, Golding won a scholarship to Queen's College, Oxford. His education was interrupted by World War I, but he later returned to college and began writing. Golding spent the next years of his life traveling extensively in the Mediterranean and Near East.

Golding is probably best known for his novels Magnolia Street (1932) and the five-volume series Tales of the Silver Sisters, also know as the Doomington Saga, novels that examine twentieth-century Jewish life in Western Europe. Golding's nonfiction works include The Jewish Problem (1938), Hitler Through the Ages (1939), travel books, and a study of James Joyce. He co-authored the dramatization of Magnolia Street performed in 1934. In 1944, Mr. Emmanuel, one of the Doomington novels, was made into a film. Although Golding never produced an autobiography, he wrote about his own life in his commentary on current events The World I Knew (1940).

Golding married Anne Wintrobe in 1956, two years before his death.