约翰·安东尼·伯吉斯·威尔森

约翰·安东尼·伯吉斯·威尔森（John Anthony Burgess Wilson）（1917年2月25日—1993年11月22日），笔名安东尼·伯吉斯，英国小说家，评论家及作曲家。他同时也是一名活跃的歌词作者、诗人、编剧、新闻工作者、小品文作家、旅行作家、播报员、翻译和教育家。小说《发条橘子》由斯坦利·库布里克拍成同名电影。

出生于英格兰北部曼彻斯特一个天主教中产阶级家庭，曾在东南亚、美国，以及滨邻地中海的欧洲国家等地方生活与工作。

他的作品包括描写大英帝国在远东没落时期的马来亚三部曲（The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy），描述一位隐退诗人和他的沉思的喜剧小说恩德比先生四部曲，描绘莎士比亚爱情生活的虚构消遣小说《没什么如太阳》（Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life），探讨道德选择的《发条橙》（A Clockwork Orange），以及1980年发表，获得评论者最高评价的《尘世权力》（Earthly Powers）。

John Anthony Burgess Wilson (25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), commonly known as Anthony Burgess, was an English writer, screenwriter, and composer.

Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. Burgess produced a number of other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 television 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. He was nominated and shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.

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.

Biography

Early life

Burgess was born on 25 February 1917 at 91 Carisbrook Street in Harpurhey, a suburb of Manchester, England, to Irish Catholic parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Wilson. He described his background as lower middle class; growing up during the Great Depression, his father and stepmother who became tobacconists and owned off-licences, were fairly well off as demand for tobacco and alcohol remained constant. He was known in childhood as Jack, Little Jack, and Johnny Eagle. 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.

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. Burgess believed his father, Joseph Wilson, resented his having survived, when his mother and sister did not.

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. After his father married the landlady of this pub, Margaret Dwyer, in 1922, Burgess was raised by his father and stepmother. By 1924 the couple had established a tobacconist and off-licence business with four properties. Burgess was briefly employed at the tobacconist shop as a child. 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. Burgess's stepmother died of a heart attack in 1940.

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." Burgess attended St. Edmund's Elementary School, before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, both Catholic schools, in Moss Side. 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." Good grades resulted in a place at a grammar school, Xaverian College, which he attended from 1928 to 1936.