FLEMING | Goldfinger, 1959, first edition, presentation copy inscribed to Raymond Chandler

IAN FLEMING

GOLDFINGER. LONDON: JONATHAN CAPE, 1959

8vo, FIRST EDITION, FIRST IMPRESSION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED TO RAYMOND CHANDLER ("To | Ray | With much | affection | from | Ian") on front free endpaper, original black cloth, lettered in gilt, design to upper cover in blind and gilt, DUST-JACKET, collector's black quarter morocco box

AN OUTSTANDING PRESENTATION COPY FROM FLEMING TO CHANDLER: A WONDERFUL EXAMPLE OF THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN TWO MASTERS OF THE THRILLER, THE CREATOR OF JAMES BOND AND THE CREATOR OF PHILIP MARLOWE.

Fleming had long admired Chandler’s work. They first met over dinner in May 1955, shortly after the publication of Moonraker on 7 April, and with Diamonds are Forever complete in manuscript form.

“Fleming treated him with the deference he reserved for very few. Chandler had arrived in England a month before and was just emerging from a long spell of drinking which had followed the death of his beloved wife Cissie at La Jolla in California the previous year... Two more different characters than the creators of Philip Marlowe and James Bond it would be hard to find, but since that dinner... they had met on several occasions and got on well together...” (Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming, p. 255). Fleming inscribed Moonraker to Chandler in one of these occasions in 1955, conceivably at their first meeting.

The meeting of Fleming and Chandler was of signficant importance to Fleming's literary career: "...the friendship between the two men... was to prove of importance to Fleming and also to James Bond. Indeed, but for Chandler it is more than likely that Fleming would have finished off his hero for good at the big desk at Goldeneye the following year. For when he came back to London from Jamaica with the manuscript of Diamonds Are Forever in March 1955, Fleming had had enough of his creation... However good the reviews of Moonraker had been when it was published that April [1955], and however much better he privately believed Diamonds Are Forever to be, he seems to have convinced himself that he had gone as far with writing about James Bond as he ever would or could..." (Pearson, p. 256). Chandler encouraged Fleming and praised Live and Let Die (which Fleming must have sent Chandler) and also wrote an endorsement for the book.

"The interest and support of Raymond Chandler had come at a crucial moment for Ian Fleming, and the brief meetings between them in May and early June, even before the testimonial was written, had an electric effect on the attitude of Fleming to his writing and his hero... Chandler's approval... quickly seems to have changed the whole attitude of Fleming to his hero and his work and to have made him decide that his next book, instead of finishing Bond for good, would go to the opposite extreme. It would be different from any other book he had written, it would have depth and seriousness. Bond would become a 'rounded character' like Chandler's hero, Philip Marlowe..." (Pearson, pp. 262-263).

Without Raymond Chandler, the James Bond series would be very short indeed.

See also lots 16 and 98.

Chandler, whose Sunday Times review of Dr. No is quoted on the front flap of the dust-jacket of Goldfinger, had inscribed a copy of his final novel Playback to Fleming in 1958 (see lot 98).

Gilbert refers to this presentation copy of Goldfinger on p. 233 of his bibliography.

LITERATURE:

Gilbert A7a (1.1)

PROVENANCE:

The library of Raymond Chandler; The Jean Vounder-Davis Collection of Raymond Chandler; Sotheby's, New York, 13 December 2011, lot 135