Fleming, Ian

You Only Live Twice

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Jonathan Cape Ltd London 1964 First Edition, First Issue 8vo. [192 x 127 x 25 mm]. 256pp. Publisher's black cloth, the front cover with Japanese lettering blocked in gilt, the title on the spine in silver. In the original dustjacket designed by Richard Chopping. (The book slightly out of square, the edges very lightly foxed, the dust-jacket with a few short tears around the edges and a little rubbed in places). Contained within a new full black goatskin drop-over box, lined with suede, the spine lettered in three panels. The first state of the first impression, with "First Published 1964" on the copyright page. The twelth in the Bond series, and the last to be published in Fleming's lifetime. Inscribed in blue biro on the front free endleaf: "To "Great Ox" Connolly-san from "Butterfly" Fleming-san". There could only be one such "Great Ox" - the author and critic Cyril Vernon Connolly (1903-1974). Fleming (1908-1964) and Connolly had briefly crossed paths at Eton, but they first met properly at Kitzbühel in 1937. Fleming introduced himself as a great admirer of Connolly's New Statesman articles, and from this a great friendship grew. Connolly later wrote "During the war, Ian, whom I always liked, seemed to have become terribly grand. For me he suddenly had all the attraction the genuine man of action often holds for the intellectual". In 1947 Connolly commissioned Fleming to write an "escaper's guide" to Jamaica for his Horizon magazine, and in 1950 Fleming helped secure Connolly's appointment to the Sunday Time's panel of regular book reviewers. He also got him into White's. In 1963 Connolly published his skit, Bond Strike's Camp, satirizing a homosexual relationship between Bond and M, but he was rather more serious in his Sunday Times review of You Only Live Twice, remarking that Bond's adventures were becoming far-fetched and calling for a return to "espionage as an exact science". Fleming forgave him, and Connolly was one of the few friends he could bear to see in his last days. Intriguingly this appears to be one of two copies of You Only Live Twice inscribed by Fleming to Connolly. The other has the more flattering message "To Celestial Connolly-san from British Fleming-san" and is now in the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa. As the book is set in Japan a few lucky recipients were addressed by Fleming with the title "san". The designer of the dustjacket, Richard Chopping, was honoured with "To Brilliant Chopping San from Clumsy Fleming San". His copy is now being offered by Peter Harrington for £17,500.

• GBP 12,000.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: ebc2903

• bookseller: George Bayntun (GREAT BRITAIN)