27 “I Love Its Colour, Its Brilliance, Its Divine Heaviness… The Power That Gold Alone Gives” 33FLEMING, Ian. Goldfinger. London, 1959. Octavo, original gilt-stamped black paper boards, dust jacket. $5600 First edition of the seventh James Bond thriller, in which Fleming’s superspy thwarts Auric Goldfinger’s plot to plunder Fort Knox. “Written when Fleming was on top of his game,” Goldfinger “is not only the longest entry in the [Bond] series but also one of the most exuberant, and garnered a certain degree of credibility in literary circles when author Anthony Burgess listed it in his Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939” (Gilbert, 230). Cloth in Gilbert’s second state, without the extra skull detail: “both were available upon publication.” Gilbert A7a (1.2). Biondi & Pickard, 45. Book nearfine with a few instances of marginal staining to pages and text block edge; dust jacket extremely good with a bit of wear to spine ends, faint discoloration to back panel, slightest toning to spine. “How’s Your Coefficient Of Toughness, James?” 34FLEMING, Ian. For Your Eyes Only. London, 1960. Octavo, original black paper boards, dust jacket. $5600 First edition of Fleming’s eighth Bond title, the only collection of Bond short stories published in the author’s lifetime, including the title story, “From a View to a Kill,” and “Quantum of Solace.” The book is notable for its jacket, “the only British dust jacket with any depiction of Bond: the eye in the peephole is his. Fleming made [artist Richard] Chopping paint it many times, until he was satisfied with the shape and, particularly, the color” (Biondi & Pickard, 46). “For Your Eyes Only” was made into the 1981 film starring Roger Moore and Carole Bouquet; the 1985 film A View to a Kill starred Moore, Christopher Walken, and Grace Jones; the 2008 film Quantum of Solace starred Daniel Craig. Book clean and near-fine; price-clipped dust jacket bright, with red lettering unfaded, also near-fine. A lovely copy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDg3OTM=