DARKNESS VISIBLE

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 265 pages. The author's seventh novel. One of the finest English novels of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents William Golding's "Darkness Visible". An allegorical novel, published after a long, twelve-year-plus hiatus. The title comes, famously, from Milton's "Paradise Lost" ("No light, but rather darkness visible") , and now has pervasive currency as the literary reference for clinical depression. Golding's novel "opens during the London blitz, when a naked child steps out of an all-consuming fire. That child, Matty, becomes a wanderer and a seeker. Two more lost children await him, twins as exquisite as they are loveless. In a final conflagration, William Golding's book lights up both the inner and outer darkness of our time" (Publisher's blurb) . A tour-de-force of a triumph (over his perennial writer's block following the monumental success of "Lord of The Flies" way back in 1954) , it is "a vision of elemental reality so vivid we seem to hallucinate the scenes" (The New York Times) . An absolute "must-have" title for William Golding collectors. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. "Darkness Visible" is regarded by the late great Gore Vidal and Harold Bloom as a masterpiece. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. One of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. A fine copy. . ISBN 0374135029.