GOLDING, William — Lord of the Flies

New York: Coward-McCann, 1955. A Near Fine First American Lord of the Flies A Cornerstone of Twentieth-Century Literature GOLDING, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Coward-McCann, [1955]. First American edition. Octavo (8 x 5 1/4 inches; 203 x 133 mm.). [viii], [1]-243, [1, blank] pp. Publisher's tan cloth over light green patterned boards, spine lettered in green. A near fine copy in the original unclipped pictorial dust jacket, also near fine, with only minimal wear. A notably fresh and attractive example. Golding's first novel and enduring masterpiece, Lord of the Flies remains one of the most powerful literary explorations of the fragility of civilization and the latent savagery within human nature. Published in the United States one year after the London first edition, the novel quickly established Golding as a major postwar voice, its stark allegory reflecting the profound disillusionment that followed the Second World War. Inspired in part as a deliberate inversion of R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1857), Golding replaces Victorian optimism with a bleak and unsettling vision of moral collapse. His experiences during the war - particularly his service in the Royal Navy - profoundly shaped the novel's central thesis: that the darkness of man is not imposed from without, but arises from within. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, Golding is today inseparable from this seminal work, which has remained continuously in print and widely studied since publication. The novel's cultural reach was further extended by the acclaimed film adaptation directed by Peter Brook in 1963, now itself considered a classic. A cornerstone of twentieth-century literature, and increasingly sought after in collectible condition, particularly in unrestored dust jacket. References: Callil & Tóibín, The Modern Library, p. 66; Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels, pp. 89-90; Calcutt & Shephard, Cult Fiction, pp. 110-111; Gekoski & Grogan A2(B). .