BOND | Field Guide of Birds in the West Indies, 1947, presentation copy

JAMES BOND

FIELD GUIDE OF BIRDS IN THE WEST INDIES. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1947

8vo, FIRST EDITION THUS, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR (“Jan, 17th 1958 | Let’s hope for more and a | successful day’s birding here on Tobago | or in the Antilles! | Jim Bond”) on half-title, colour illustrated frontispiece, one black and white illustrated plate, additional black and white vignette illustrations throughout text, original brown cloth, lettered in black, map endpapers, annotations in pencil throughout, one in pen, DUST-JACKET, collector’s green cloth folding case

"IT STRUCK ME THAT THIS BRIEF, UN-ROMANTIC, ANGLO-SAXON AND YET VERY MASCULINE NAME WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED, AND SO A SECOND JAMES BOND WAS BORN"

A COPY OF THE BOOK THAT GAVE JAMES BOND HIS NAME.

James Bond was an American ornithologist and the leading authority on birds of the West Indies for decades. This book was originally published as Birds of the West Indies in 1936. Fleming owned a copy of this book at Goldeneye, his estate in Jamaica, where he sat down to write Casino Royale in 1952. The author explained:

"I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard." (Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962)

Years later, Fleming wrote in a letter to Mrs Bond: "In return, I can only offer you or James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purpose you may think fit. Perhaps one day your husband will discover a particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion by calling it Ian Fleming" (The New York Times, 17 February 1989)