Lord of the Flies

8vo of 248 pp. Publisher’s original red cloth with white spine lettering, dust jacket.

186 x 124 mm.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies.Faber and Faber, London, 1954.

First edition of Golding’s first book, one of the best-known works in modern literature.

The author's first book, a post-apocalyptic novel of boys on a remote island descending into barbarity.

"A collection of modern fiction would never be complete without it" (Connolly, 136).

“Lord of the Flies is not an examination of the idiosyncratic nature of a group of young English boys, but of the essential nature of humanity itself, its predisposition to violence and cruelty when removed from the restraining influences of civilization… ” (K. McCarron, Oxford DNB).

Novel telling the story of a group of English schoolboys evacuated during a nuclear war. Their plane crashes on a deserted island: all the adults are killed: the children are left alone.

Golding challenges the optimistic theories of the previous century. At first, the children try to establish a stable social and political organization. Nevertheless, they quickly descend into a form of primitive savagery that gradually erases the symbols of the civilized world.

Behind the apparent simplicity of the narrative, the inexorable sequence of actions elevates the story above everyday reality with a mechanism as mathematical as it is tragic. "Perhaps it is through books, stories, poetry, and lectures that we who have humanity's ear may lead mankind closer to the perilous safety of a world of peace and love. We need more humanity, more affection, more love." Thus William Golding defined, in his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, a philosophy that Lord of the Flies had already illustrated thirty years earlier" (A. Blayac).

Originally published in 1954, The Lord of the Flies was named to Modern Library’s 100 Greatest Novels List of the twentieth century.

In the early 1960s cultural commentators noted that Lord of the Flies was replacing Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye as the bible of the American adolescent. Since then, this masterpiece has established itself as a modern classic.

"This brilliant work is a frightening parody on man's return to that state of darkness from which it took him thousands of years to emerge. Fully to succeed, a fantasy must approach very close to reality. Lord of the Flies does. It must also be superbly written. It is" (The New York Times Book Review).

A lovely copy of the true first edition preserved in its original publisher’s cloth, with its dust jacket, in collector’s condition.

SOLD