GOLDING, William ~ Darkness Visible. Inscribed by Golding.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Faber and Faber, London: 1979.

8vo., maroon publisher's boards, lettered vertically in gilt to spine; in the matching dustwrapper (unclipped, £4.95 net); the front panel showing an illustration of 'The Rainmaker' by Russell Drysdale; THE BOOK very good, with pages evenly toned, as is common; small bruises to spine tips; THE WRAPPER a touch rubbed and toned but else near-fine. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing. This copy with an inscription by Golding to the title page: "For Pauline Valentine with best wishes from William Golding." The writer and playwright William Golding is undoubtedly best known today for his debut novel 'Lord of the Flies', though he also published twelve further volumes of fiction over the course of his life. 'Darkness Visible' was his seventh novel, and written after a hiatus of some twelve years, predominantly caused by a combination of writer's block and alcoholism. In many ways echoed by the plot's focus on morality, sexuality and spirituality, it also reflects on Golding's years in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, with the central character severely disfigured during the London blitz, and emerging from it seemingly with supernatural powers. The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the year of publication, and marked a turning point for Golding - he would go on to write a further six novels before his death in 1993, as well as winning the Booker Prize in 1980 for 'Rites of Passage', and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. The title is taken directly from Milton's 'Paradise Lost': "No light, but rather darkness visible". "We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement."

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Near Fine