Monteith was 'enormously interested', but after favourable reviews of Lord of the Flies, it was left unfinished owing to Golding's belief that it would come off as a cheap imitation of other historical epics. He had started writing a novel exploring the father-son relationship through the mythical character of Telegonus (son of Odysseus), titled In Search of My Father, a year prior Monteith requested a chapter, the typescript for which demonstrates 'some of Golding's most spectacular prose'.
Golding began work on The Inheritors in the autumn of 1954, mere weeks after the publication of Lord of the Flies Golding was concerned that he would be unable to write another novel and had sent a 'long, anxious letter in return' to his editor Charles Monteith when asked what his next publication would be. This handwritten manuscript and the typescript that ensued are now held in the University of Exeter's Special Collections Archives, where they can be used for further research and study. Like Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors began life in a Bishop Wordsworth's School notebook. It was published by Faber and Faber in 1955.
It concerns the extinction of one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens. The Inheritors is a work of prehistoric fiction and the second novel by the British author William Golding, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954).
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