Live and Let Die.

FLEMING, Ian.

Item Number: 123461

London: Jonathan Cape, 1954.

First edition of the second James Bond novel. Octavo, original black cloth. An exceptional association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, “To Clare who sheds much light. With love Ian 1954.” The recipient was Clare Blanshard, a WRNS Wren who Fleming met and romanced in 1944 when he visited Ceylon to review the intelligence arm of the British Pacific Fleet. Blanshard was the trusted assistant of Alan Hillgarth, Chief of Naval Intelligence Eastern Theatre, who as naval attaché in Madrid had worked with Fleming on Operation Golden Eye, plans for subversion and sabotage in Spain should it fall to the Fascists, and played a prominent role in Operation Mincemeat, the famous “Man who never was”. Mutually attracted, Fleming and Blanshard spent time together in Colombo and on a trip to Sydney where “Ian and Clare enjoyed the good life, staying at Petty’s Hotel, frequenting the nightclubs and taking trips to Whale Beach for swimming”, when he returned to London Fleming sent his “best love to the angel Clare” via a letter to Hillgarth, “she is a jewel and will miss her protective wing very much” (Simmons, Ian Fleming’s War). For her part Clare told her brother “it doesn’t make any difference that I don’t mean anything to him he’s so awfully nice” (Macintyre, p. 218). Clearly a well-matched pair, they remained good friends and perhaps occasional lovers. After the war both worked for the Kemsley Group of newspapers, Fleming as foreign manager for The Sunday Times, and Blanshard, based on Fleming’s “fulsome [sic.] commendations”, became the “highly-accomplished secretary” of Robert Harling the ground-breaking typographer and designer of the Sunday Times and House & Garden (Harling, Ian Fleming). Harling had been recruited by Fleming for the Inter-Service Topographical Department on the basis of his visual acuity and ended up assigned to 30AU [Assault Unit] landing in France soon after D-Day, embroiled in the heavy action around Cherbourg. It has been noted that Harling, in his “sardonic elegance of manner and cool sexual expertise” (ODNB) bore a distinct resemblance to his good friend’s immortal creation. Famously Blanshard was one the earliest readers of Fleming’s manuscript for Casino Royale, his first essay at fiction; advising him not to publish it, or at least to publish it under a pseudonym, to avoid the “mill-stone round his neck”. On that occasion he refused her advice, but in his inscription here Fleming is expressing his gratitude for her skill in researching and proof-reading the present work, professional advice he had no problem in accepting. A wonderfully allusive association, blending Fleming’s very real wartime exploits and loyalties with his legendarily, sometimes darkly, fanciful amours in the creation of the inimitable Bond. Fine in a near fine first issue dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco solander box, red morocco labels lettered in gilt, compartments elaborately gilt, front panel with black morocco roundel gilt after the original front panel of jacket.

"Fleming accomplished an extraordinary amount in the history of the thriller. Almost single-handedly, he revived popular interest in the spy novel, spawning legions of imitations, parodies, and critical and fictional reactions Through the immense success of the filmed versions of his books, his character James Bond became the best known fictional personality of his time and Fleming the most famous writer of thrillers since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" (Reilly, 571). The inspiration for these changes came from Fleming's experiences of travel in the U.S. and his knowledge of Jamaica itself, where Live and Let Die was written at Fleming's 'Goldeneye' estate. The novel's innovations were positively noted by The Sunday Times when they wrote "[h]ow wincingly well Mr. Fleming writes." And the Times thought Live and Let Die "is an ingenious affair, full of recondite knowledge and horrific spills and thrills - of slightly sadistic excitements also - though without the simple and bold design of its predecessor."