Lord of the Flies First Edition: How to Identify the 1954 Faber

A Lord of the Flies first edition is the hardback published by Faber and Faber in London in September 1954. It is a red book, lettered in white, with a copyright page that says "First published in mcmliv" and nothing beneath that line, wrapped in a pen and ink jacket by Anthony Gross priced 12s 6d. Faber reprinted the novel before the year was out using the same picture, so many copies described online as "1954 first edition" are second or third impressions. The checks below separate them in about a minute.

We track the editions on the Lord of the Flies page, with the points below recorded against each printing, and William Golding's author page lists his other novels.

The novel the publishers turned down

Golding was a schoolmaster in Salisbury when he wrote the book, under the title Strangers from Within, and it reached Faber on 14 September 1953 after a round of rejections. How many depends on who is counting: Peter Harrington says twenty-one, the figure that has passed into legend; the Golding estate says "a number of publishers"; 3 Quarks Daily gives seven; Fine Books and Collections, reporting the 2024 Exeter exhibition, says about six. All agree on what happened next. Faber's reader, Polly Perkins, dismissed it on the covering letter as an absurd and uninteresting fantasy, "Rubbish & dull. Pointless." A new editor, Charles Monteith, took the typescript from the reject pile, persuaded the firm to publish it, and worked with Golding on the revisions: the opening section about a nuclear war went, Simon was toned down, and the title became Lord of the Flies. Monteith remained Golding's editor for the rest of his life.

The first impression was small. Peter Harrington, Lucius Books and Fine Books and Collections give the run as 3,040 copies; Sotheby's, Wikipedia and several other dealers round it to 3,000. It sold slowly, which is why so few copies survive in a clean jacket, but E. M. Forster named it his novel of the year and Faber reprinted before 1954 was out.

1959: WILLIAM GOLDING Profile | Monitor | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC ArchiveBBC Archive · 17:29 · plays from YouTube

The one-minute check

Take the book out of its jacket and look at three things.

1. The copyright page. A first impression reads "First published in mcmliv by Faber and Faber Limited, 24 Russell Square, London", names the printer as Latimer Trend of Plymouth, and has nothing printed beneath that statement. Faber dated reprints in Roman numerals on the same page, so a second impression adds "Second impression mcmliv", a third adds "Third impression mcmlv", and so on. Any impression line at all means a reprint. Faber never used a number line on this book.
2. The binding. Red cloth with the title and author in white on the spine. The reprints used the same cloth, so the binding confirms the publisher rather than the printing. A copy in blue cloth is the rare trial binding described below.
3. The jacket. The front flap carries a synopsis of the book and the price 12s 6d net. The rear flap is given over to reviews of another Faber title, Nikos Kazantzakis's Christ Recrucified. There are no reviews of Lord of the Flies anywhere on it.

If all three agree, you have a first impression in the first issue jacket. If the book passes the first two tests but the jacket quotes reviews of the novel, you have a first impression in a later jacket, which Bonhams catalogues as "first impression, in second issue jacket": one sold for £1,024 in November 2025 against £4,096 for a copy in the first issue jacket eight months earlier. Our guide to dust jackets explains why the jacket carries so much of the value.

First impression, later impressions and the American first

	First impression	Later Faber impressions	First American edition
Publisher and year	Faber and Faber, 1954	Faber and Faber, 1954 to 1959 and later	Coward-McCann, New York, 1955
Copyright page	"First published in mcmliv", no line beneath	Impression line added in Roman numerals	"First American Edition" stated
Cloth	Red, white spine lettering	Red, white spine lettering	Two-tone cloth, spine lettered in green
Jacket art	Anthony Gross ink drawing of the island	Same drawing	Different pictorial jacket
Jacket price	12s 6d net	12s 6d on the second impression, 15s by the fourth	$3.50 on the front flap
Flaps	Synopsis; rear flap advertises Christ Recrucified	Review blurbs; "Jacket design by Anthony Gross" credit	Publisher's blurb
Bibliography	Gekoski and Grogan A2(a)		Gekoski and Grogan A2(b)

The 12s 6d price is necessary but not sufficient: a dealer listing for a second impression describes its jacket as unclipped and still marked 12s 6d, so the price confirms an early jacket, not the first issue. Our guide to points of issue explains why collectors separate the state of the jacket from the printing of the book.

The jacket, the band and the blue cloth

The Gross jacket is a line drawing of the island's vegetation with small figures of the boys, washed in yellow and blue, and it stayed on the book through the 1950s. What changed was the flap text. Bauman describes its copy as "first issue dust jacket, without reviews", and Know Thy Shelf and First and Fine agree on the synopsis, the Kazantzakis rear flap and a "John O'London's Book of the Month" line above the price. Second issue jackets add review blurbs to both flaps and a credit line for the designer. By the fourth impression of 1957 the price was 15s, the front flap quoted Forster, and the back panel advertised The Inheritors and Pincher Martin.

Some first impressions carry a printed wrap-around band quoting the first reviews under the heading "E. M. Forster's Choice". John Atkinson Books and Peter Harrington both describe the band as a later addition, produced after the first copies had sold and before the reprint. It is a pleasant extra, not a first issue point, and the bibliography does not record it.

The rarity among bindings is blue cloth. Jonkers has sold a copy it describes as a primary or trial issue in blue cloth lettered in white, citing Gekoski and Grogan for four known copies, and Sotheby's offered a signed copy in a greyish blue trial binding in December 2018 at £10,000 to £15,000, also noting four located copies. Lucius Books has offered an advance copy in a proof-state jacket; that dealer and a Biblio listing put the number of advance copies at perhaps ten, a figure we have not confirmed elsewhere.

The American first

Coward-McCann published the first American edition in New York in 1955, and it is a different book in every respect. The copyright page states "First American Edition". The binding is two-tone cloth with the title stamped in green on the spine; the two dealers we checked describe the boards as tan and green and as grey-blue, so we give no colour until they agree. The jacket is a different pictorial design priced $3.50, and the bibliography number is Gekoski and Grogan A2(b).

It was not a success. John Carey's biography, as reviewed in The New Republic, records that Coward-McCann printed 5,000 copies and sold 2,383, and Fine Books and Collections gives the same sales figure, which makes the American first scarcer than the Faber book even though it sells for much less. The paperback that made the novel a campus bestseller came from Capricorn Books, a Putnam imprint, in 1959. Our guide to first editions versus first American editions explains why the Faber book is the true first.

Faber issued its own paperback in 1958, and the educational edition with an introduction and notes by Ian Gregor and Mark Kinkead-Weekes first appeared in 1962 and is still in print. Neither is collectable at first edition prices, but a school copy with "First published in 1954" on the copyright page is the commonest book to be offered as a first by someone who has not read past that line.

What first editions have sold for

These are past results, each with its house and date, converted at roughly $1.30 to the pound where the sale was in dollars. They are not a valuation of any particular copy: the jacket, its issue and a signature move the price by a factor of ten or more.

Date	Sale	Copy	Price
January 2026	RR Auction, lot 340	First impression, 12s 6d jacket, torn and foxed	$4,868 (about £3,740) with premium
November 2025	Bonhams online, lot 169	First impression in second issue jacket, with a signed 1958 paperback	£1,024 with premium
March 2025	Bonhams online, lot 201	First impression, first issue jacket, tape at the spine head	£4,096 with premium
November 2022	Bonhams Knightsbridge, lot 292	First impression, unclipped and unrestored 12s 6d jacket, owner's signature dated November 1954	£7,650 with premium
May 2022	Forum Auctions, lot 167	First impression rebound in morocco, no jacket	£650 hammer
December 2021	Sotheby's London, lot 74	First impression, jacket restored at head and foot, estimated £3,000 to £5,000	£3,780, as reported by Fine Books and Collections
September 2021	Christie's New York, Baum collection, lot 255	First impression, fine copy in jacket, estimated $2,000 to $3,000	$16,250 (about £12,500)
July 2021	Forum Auctions, lot 184	Presentation copy inscribed to Adam Bittleston, first state jacket	£12,000 hammer, against £6,000 to £8,000
March 2019	Bloomsbury Auctions, lot 30	Dedication copy signed by Golding	£11,250 with premium
June to July 2024	Hindman, lot 63	Coward-McCann first American edition in jacket	$762 (about £590)

The jacket is almost everything: the rebound copy without one made £650 at the same house that took £12,000 hammer for an inscribed copy in its jacket. Condition then spreads the price fourfold, from the restored Sotheby's jacket at £3,780 to the untouched Bonhams jacket at £7,650, and a fine copy at Christie's ran to five times its estimate.

Dealer asking prices sit above the auction results. In October 2026 Peter Harrington lists a very good copy in jacket with the later band at £12,500; John Atkinson Books asks £8,500 for a first printing with the band in a clipped jacket; Lucius Books lists a first printing rebound in morocco at £1,750 and its signed advance copy at £50,000; Bauman listed a copy in a clipped first issue jacket at $17,500 in July 2024. Second and third impressions in jacket are offered at £500 to £1,800, and The First Edition Rare Books asks $1,850 for a near fine Coward-McCann first. For the condition terms, see our guide to book condition grading.

Pitfalls

• "1954" in the listing title. The second impression is also dated 1954. Only the absence of an impression line proves a first.
• A first issue jacket on a reprint. Jackets migrate, and the first and second impressions share the same cloth, so check the copyright page of the book inside the jacket you are paying for.
• Facsimile jackets. Good reproductions of the Gross jacket exist. Look for period paper, toning that matches the book and a printed, not pasted, 12s 6d price; our guide to facsimile dust jackets covers the tells.
• The American first described as the first. The Coward-McCann book says "First American Edition", and that is what it is. Sellers who drop the middle word are asking Faber money for a book worth a tenth of it.
• School editions. Any copy with the Gregor and Kinkead-Weekes introduction, an ISBN or the words "Educational edition" is a reprint whatever its first line says.

Check your copy

Open the Lord of the Flies page and answer the points we list there for your copy: the copyright page wording, the jacket price and the flap text. The page tells you whether it matches the first impression and the first issue jacket. Record what you own and we will tell you when recorded sales for your printing are added.