The Inheritors with the wraparound band by William Golding first edition 1955

London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1955 
 
8vo., original blue publisher’s cloth, lettered in gilt to backstrip with publisher’s name to foot; together in both the original unclipped pictorial dust jacket (12s 6d net), featuring a drawing by Anthony Gross, and the scarce wraparound band with four reviews from the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer and Encounter; pp. [x], 11-233, [vii]; an excellent example, lightly rubbed to spine tips with a couple of tiny dents to edges; internally clean and bright; one tiny spot to the fore-edge, and an unobtrusive purple ink stamp to rear paste-down; the jacket very good, slightly browned at edges and creased along folds; some minimal browning to the backstrip with a couple of tiny nicks to head; wraparound band with some light vertical creases, but seldom found at all.
 
First edition of Golding’s second novel, published after the great success of Lord of the Flies the previous year. This copy with contemporary ownership name and date of author Anthony Price to the front free endpaper. Price was the author of numerous thrillers, published in the 1970s and 80s with a focus on espionage. 
 
Golding began work on The Inheritors just a few weeks after Lord of the Flies, and, like his previous work, it began life as a series of notes in a Bishop Wordsworth School notebook - where he was, at the time, teaching English and Religious Education. Golding was keen to preserve similar themes of savagery and the breakdown of civilisation, with the plot this time focusing on a band of Neanderthals, and their interactions with (and fascination by) a group of early humans who have mastered the skills of fire-making, ship-building, and weaponry.  Golding himself considered the novel to be his finest, and it remained his firm favourite throughout his life. In an article for The Guardian published in 2015, the author’s daughter Judy writes that “The genius of the book is to take familiar things – the family, the forest, the fascination with and horror of water – and make us see these through the eyes and mind of someone who cannot think like us.” She goes on “he produces a description which at first reads like a lyrical evocation of a beautiful landscape with caverns and light, and many subtle changes….Every reader should have the chance to read this fresh – there should be no spoiling. But I defy anyone to read it unmoved.”
 
Unusual in both the bright jacket and wraparound.