William Golding: The Faber Letters

Three people have been of major importance and influence in my life and you are one of them. There is a way in which I am as a writer at least partly your creation. -- William Golding to Charles Monteith

In 1953, William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies was rescued from a 'slush pile' of unsolicited manuscripts by Charles Monteith, a new young editor at the publishing house Faber & Faber. It went on to sell over 25 million copies. Over the next forty years Monteith worked closely with Golding on every one of his novels.

These letters tell the story of their remarkable collaboration. They chart Golding's transformation from unknown middle-aged schoolmaster to knighted Nobel Prizewinner, and they tell the story of a deep and mutually rewarding friendship, as 'Dear Monteith' and 'Dear Golding' become 'Dear Charles' and 'Dear Bill'.

In this beautifully produced, stitch-bound volume, Tim Kendall draws on both public and private archives to reveal the relationship between one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and his publisher, both men who considered themselves, for different reasons, to be outsiders. Their correspondence sheds fascinating light on both the mysteries of the writing process and the vagaries of the literary world.

Generous, amusing, acerbic, intimate and often irreverent, these letters encompass gossip, reading recommendations and stories of Greek island adventures as well as detailed discussion of titles, characters and Golding's dreadful spelling.