The Inheritors – William Golding (Faber and Faber, 1st Edition 2nd Impression, 1959)

This Faber and Faber first edition, second impression (1959) of William Golding's The Inheritors is of interest to collectors of William Golding, Nobel Prize literature, and 20th century British fiction first editions.

About: A very good copy in a good-plus dust jacket. The jacket retains the original and iconic design featuring the striking Neanderthal figure in red and black on a cream ground; colours are toned and faded as expected for a copy of this age, with some chipping and wear to the spine ends and corners, and a small tear to the top of the spine. Boards are tight in the original blue cloth. The interior pages show age-toning consistent with the period, but the text block is clean and unmarked throughout.

Details:

• Title: The Inheritors
• Author: William Golding
• Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited, 24 Russell Square, London W.C.1
• First published: MCMLV (1955)
• This impression: Second impression, MCMLIX (1959)
• Printed by: Latimer Trend & Co Ltd, Plymouth
• Binding: Hardcover, original blue cloth
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good+

Synopsis: Faber and Faber first edition, second impression of Golding's second novel — widely regarded as one of his finest achievements. In the original dust jacket with the iconic cover design. A desirable copy of a key title in the Golding canon.

Review: William Golding's The Inheritors (1955) is a tour de force of imaginative fiction, narrated from the perspective of a small group of Neanderthals as they encounter the first modern humans. Golding inverts H.G. Wells's confident progressivism — the novel opens with an epigraph from Wells's Outline of History - to produce a haunting meditation on innocence, violence, and the cost of civilisation. Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, and The Inheritors remains one of the most admired novels of the post-war period.