INSCRIBED BY GOLDING TO MAVIS PINDARD, WITH A QUOTE FROM TENNYSON.

[GOLDING, William]; John CAREY [Ed.] ~ William Golding. The Man and his Books. A Tribute on his 75th Birthday. Inscribed by Golding.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Faber and Faber, London: 1986.

8vo., black publisher's boards, lettered and ruled in gilt to spine with publisher's device to foot; containing 8 black and white photographs on glossy paper, spaced sporadically throughout; together in the unclipped photographic dustwrapper (priced £12.50 net to front flap); THE BOOK a touch bumped at spine tips, with pages evenly toned, as is common, else near-fine; THE WRAPPER very near-fine, just a touch scuffed at edges. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION. This copy inscribed by William Golding in blue biro to the half title: "for / Mavis Pindard / with many thanks - / After many a Summer! / William Golding." The recipient worked at Faber in the Subsidiary Rights department, and the quote is taken directly from Tennyson's 'Tithonus': "Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan..." A wonderful collection of anecdotes and stories which celebrates the writer's seventy-fifth birthday, and which includes personal recollections of Golding as a schoolmaster, a son, a traveller and a writer, from family, friends and critics. There are also contributions from fellow writers such as Heaney, (who offers a new poem, 'Parable Island'); Hughes (on the subject of baboons and Neanderthals); John Fowles and Ian McEwan, who each "register their literary debts to Britain's latest Nobel literary laureate" (dustwrapper). The final chapter is an interview with Golding conducted by John Carey, in which he looks back on his own life and work and reveals "a novel simmering. But it's only simmering. It'll be a hell of a time before it comes to the boil". Scarce signed by the Nobel Laureate, and even more so inscribed thus.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine