Description
“A NAKED ARM SMELLING OF CHANEL NO. 5 SNAKED ROUND HIS NECK…”: FIRST ISSUE OF THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, ONE OF ONLY 940 COPIES WITH THE GILT GUN ON THE FRONT COVER, THE ONLY “PRESENTATION COPY”
FLEMING, Ian. The Man With the Golden Gun. London: Jonathan Cape, (1965). Octavo, original gilt-stamped black paper boards, patterned endpapers, original dust jacket; housed in a custom full morocco clamshell box.
First edition of Fleming’s final Bond novel, published the year after the author’s death, one of only 940 copies with the gilt-embossed gun on the front of the binding. The only “presentation” copy, with a decorative bookplate on the front pastedown inscribed by Fleming to the secretary of the first James Bond Fan Club, “To the faithful Eileen from Ian Fleming.”
“Fleming was adamant that this would be the last James Bond novel” (Gilbert A13a). Because Fleming wrote this Bond adventure while ill— the author “was only able to work on it for one and a half hours a day”— the publisher hired novelist Kingsley Amis to complete and revise it (Black, 75). The Cape archives state that 940 copies were produced with the golden gun stamping—a binding that is “effectively the publisher’s trial binding, rejected in favor of a cheaper alternative” without the golden gun altogether [Gilbert A13a (1.1)]. “Copies tend to turn up most frequently in the extremities of the British Commonwealth, e.g., South Africa, Kenya, Australia and New Zealand” (Biondi & Pickard, 50), because “publication day would be the same throughout the British Commonwealth and stock would need to arrive in good time to meet this date… those nations furthest afield would be sent the earliest available copies (which, of course, meant the ‘Golden Gun’ bindings) at the the first opportunity” (Gilbert). Gilbert A13a (1.1). Since Man With the Golden Gun was published eight months after Fleming’s death, no presentation copies in the usual sense exist. However, Eileen M. Cond had received signed bookplates from Ian Fleming in her position as secretary of the first James Bond Fan Club. Before his death, Fleming had sent her a signed bookplate especially for the forthcoming book and it was his intention that it should carry the inscription. No other similar copy is known to exist. From the significant Ian Fleming collection of Martin Schøyen, with his bookplate. Schøyen’s private collection of manuscripts, which spans many cultures and vast time periods, is one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind.
Fine condition. A uniquely desirable Fleming book.
