WILLIAM GOLDING. The Spire. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964. First American edition.

A cathedral without foundations. A dean convinced that God has commanded him to build a spire upon it.

Published a decade after Lord of the Flies, The Spire takes one of architecture’s most extraordinary acts, the raising of a medieval cathedral spire, and turns it into a study of obsession.

Dean Jocelin has seen his spire in a vision. To him, its construction is an act of faith. To those who must actually build it, the problem is rather more physical: the cathedral beneath it was never designed to carry its enormous weight.

Jocelin refuses to yield. As the spire rises higher, the building begins to strain, the people around him are drawn into the consequences of his certainty, and Golding steadily removes the distinction between divine inspiration and human obsession.

The result is one of Golding’s most concentrated novels, written during the major period of his career following Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, and Free Fall. Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.

This is the first American edition, published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1964, in its original pictorial dust jacket designed by Paul Bacon Studio.

Publisher’s black cloth. Original dust jacket with photograph of Golding by Conway Studios on the rear panel.

Very good. Internally clean and well preserved, with light age-toning. Jacket with some toning and general wear, including a small area of loss at the lower edge of the front panel and minor wear at the extremities.