AYRTON, Michael (illus.); William Golding.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Preliminary Study for The Lord of the Flies. Ayrton produced one of his "fine book covers" (Horne, p. 83) for the Faber & Faber paperback edition of The Lord of the Flies in 1973. In contrast with the original boys cavorting on a sunny tropical island, Ayrton chose to concentrate on the nightmare of the pig's head from chapter eight ("Gift for the Darkness"). This is a study for that design.Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) enjoyed a varied career, including theatre design (Gielgud's Macbeth in 1942), sculpture (with Henry Moore as his mentor), and writing. "He was one of the most cerebral and literary figures ever to have worked in Britain and his performances as writer and artist are of roughly equal stature" (Horne, p. 83)."Faber initially marketed Golding's novel as a guileless supplement to [the] tradition [of The Coral Island]. On the cover for the first edition the boys explore a tropical forest of fronds and creepers that is not at all threatening... Gradually, successive editions came clean about the book's diabolism. In Michael Ayrton's 1974 [sic] design, the head of the sacrificed beast suggests a slavering werewolf on to which a pig's snout has been grafted" (Conrad).

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