From Russia, With Love.

FLEMING, Ian.

$48,000.00

Item Number: 131400

London: Jonathan Cape, 1957.

First edition, first state of the fifth James Bond novel and what Fleming considered one of his best books and listed in Life magazine as one of US President John F. Kennedy’s top ten favorite books. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine, gilt rose and gun emblem to the front panel. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Dan from Ian Fleming.” Near fine in a near fine price-clipped first issue dust jacket. Jacket design by Richard Chopping. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Uncommon signed.

"Described in the Times Literary Supplement as ‘most brilliant,’ the book was a great commercial success and helped to launch Fleming as a best-selling novelist It ended with Bond seriously wounded and nearly killed by fugu poison from the sex organs of the Japanese globe-fish While the ending was not quite Sherlock Holmes and his apparently fatal last struggle with evil at the Reichenbach Falls, Fleming had provided himself with an opportunity to remove his hero. He was not, however, to take it. There was public agitation when 007 was reported dead. Bond was irreplaceable" (Black, 27, 30). "This is a very highly sought after title, as it is generally considered the best novel in the series and the best of the movies, as well" (Biondi & Pickard, 44). Made into the 1964 film of the same title with Sean Connery as Bond and Lotte Lenya as ex-KGB agent Rosa Klebb.