From Russia, With Love by Ian Fleming, First Edition, 1957

Fleming, Ian. From Russia, With Love. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. First edition. Octavo. Rebound in full black calf leather, with custom gilt and red gun and rose embossed stamp to front, gilt tooling and titles to spine, and matching black quarter leather and red cloth archival clamshell. 

Presented is the first edition of Ian Fleming's fifth James Bond novel, From Russia, With Love. The book was published in London by Jonathan Cape, in 1957. It is presented rebound in spectacular full black calf leather, with a custom gilt and red gun and rose embossed stamp to the front board, and gilt tooling, titles, and raised bands to the book’s spine. It is housed in a matching  quarter black leather and red cloth archival clamshell. 

In From Russia, With Love, James Bond must recover a stolen Soviet encryption device from SMERSH. Fleming considered this in many ways his best work. In 1961, President Kennedy named it among his ten favorite books, "JFK's seal of approval was just the fillip that Viking, Ian's new [American] publishers, needed for his books to take off in the United States" (Lycett, 383). The book was a great commercial success and helped to launch Fleming as a best-selling novelist. The adventure novel ended with Bond seriously wounded and nearly killed by fugu poison from the sex organs of the Japanese globe-fish. Fleming had provided himself with an opportunity to remove his hero and there was tremendous public agitation when 007 was reported dead. 

From Russia was the first Bond novel to feature Richard Chopping's distinctive artwork: "For 50 guineas, [Fleming] commissioned Richard Chopping, whom he described as 'the only English master' in the art of trompe l'oeil, to paint him a picture of a revolver crossed with a rose for the cover of From Russia, With Love. Over the course of the next decade Chopping… was to become widely known for the meticulous detail of his distinctive Bond novel covers" (Lycett, 300). The famous book was made into a film in 1964 with Sean Connery as Bond and Lotte Lenya as ex-KGB agent Rosa Klebb.

CONDITION:

In very good condition. Octavo. Specially bound one-off presentation of Fleming's fifth Bond book. The book features full black calf leather boards with a custom gilt and red embossed rose and gun on the front board, as well as gilt titles, tooling, and raised bands to the spine. It is housed in a stunning, matching leather and cloth clamshell with raised bands and gilt tooling and titles on the spine. Internally, the original first edition pages are very clean, without marks, tears or any stains.

Dimensions: Book: 7 3/4" H x 5 1/4" W x 1" D. Clamshell: 9" H x 6 1/4" W x 1 3/4" D.