Ian Fleming First Editions Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice, Golden Gun, Thunderball.

CASINO ROYALE
Published in 1953 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth & red lettering & heart on front board
Verso title page states "First Published 1953"
Dust wrapper priced at 10s.6d

Rear panel has pencil drawing of Ian Fleming by Bartlett,
with blurb about Fleming's life below Front flap has blurb with jacket credit immediately below There should be NO Times review Rear flap is blank but for title, author, Cape & price in bottom left corner

4,728 copies were bound up, a large number of which went to public libraries

LIVE AND LET DIE

Published in 1954 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth & gilt lettering & gilt medallion on front board
Verso title page states "First Published 1954"
Dust wrapper priced at 10s.6d

There are 3 states of 1st edition dust wrappers First State : No credit for jacket design on front flap
Second State : 2 line credit is positioned midway between blurb end & price
Third State : 2 line credit is positioned directly under the blurb

7,500 copies were printed of the 1st edition

MOONRAKER

Published in 1955 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth & silver lettering
Verso title page states "First Published 1955"
Dust wrapper priced at 10s.6d

There is a "semi issue point" Page 10 last line shoot / shoo. No priority established but I believe shoot to be preferable . There are also 2 paper thick nesses . One text block measures 19mm whilst the other is 15mm
The 15mm is poorer quality and prone to browning

The 1st print run was 9,900 copies

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DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

Published in 1956 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth & silver lettering
Verso title page states "First Published 1956"
Dust wrapper priced at 12s.6d

The 1st print run was 14,700 copies

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Published in 1957 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black decorated cloth
Verso title page states "First Published 1957"
Dust wrapper priced at 13s.6d

The 1st set of sheets were of poor print quality and rejected by Cape . These were later sent to the book club
This means that, theoretically, the '1st printing' is the book club edition

Note: The Cape sheets have Cape name and logos on title page. Those with 'Book Club' are later printings and the above does not apply. The Cape edition was published first, and is the first edition

The 1st print run was 15,000 copies

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Dr NO

Published in 1958 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth with or without "dancing girl" figure
Verso title page states "First Published 1958"
Dust jacket priced at 13s.6d

There is no priority established for the dancing girl. From experience, the ones without the figure appear to be rarer

The 1st print run was 20,000 copies

GOLDFINGER

Published in 1959 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth gilt lettering , skull embossed on front board
Verso title page states "First Published 1959"
Dust wrapper priced at 15s

The 1st print run was 24,000 copies

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Published in 1960 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth, gilt lettering , eye design on front board
Verso title page states "First Published 1960"
Dust wrapper priced at 15s

The 1st print run was 21,712 copies

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THUNDERBALL

The 1st print run was 50,938 copies

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

The 1st print run was 30,000 copies

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ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

There is a signed limited edition of this title
250 numbered copies - but unnumbered copies also turn up
Jonathan Cape's records suggest there should be approx 43 unnumbered
Ten of these were given to Ian Fleming the rest intended as presentation copies

The 1st print run was 45,000 copies

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

The 1st print run was 56,000 copies

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THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

The 1st print run was 82,000 copies

OCTOPUSSY

Published in 1966 by Jonathan Cape in London
Black cloth, gilt lettering
Verso title page states "First Published 1966"
Dust wrapper priced at 10s.6d

This title was repriced in order to clear remaining copies. Contrary to popular opinion it was not actually remaindered. A London bookseller bought the last 32,000 copies directly. He gradually sold them for £1.50 each. Copies with unclipped jackets and no signs of a price sticker are preferred

The 1st print run was 50,000 copies

	Born:	May 28, 1908 Mayfair, London
	Died:	August 12, 1964 (aged 56)
	Occupation:	Author and journalist
	Nationality:	English
	Writing period:	1953 to 1964
	Genres:	Spy fiction
	Debut works:	Casino Royale (1953)

Biography
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming (née Rose). Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming. He was the grandson of Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. (since 2000 part of JP Morgan Chase). The actor Christopher Lee is his cousin, and actress Dame Celia Johnson is his sister-in-law (wife of his brother Peter).

Fleming was educated at Durnford School in Dorset, Eton College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He won the Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had only been achieved once before him. He found Sandhurst to be uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment in Kitzbühel, Austria run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member of Boodle's the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his death in 1964.

His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, daughter of Lord Wemyss and former wife of Viscount Rothermere, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel Coward.

World War II

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming (then a reserve subaltern in the Black Watch) as his personal assistant. He was commissioned first as a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve lieutenant, and subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Commander, then Commander.

In 1940 Fleming and Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, about preparing reports devoted to the geography of countries engaged in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946.

In Naval Intelligence, Fleming conceived of Operation Ruthless, a plan – not executed – for capturing the German naval version of the Wehrmacht's Enigma communications encoder.

He also conceived of a plan to use British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a faux cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because Rudolf Hess had flown to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters's book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts Fleming conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland, in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and resulted in Hess's capture: this claim has no other source.

Fleming also formulated Operation Goldeneye, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar as well as a plan of defence in the unlikely event that Spain joined the Axis Powers and, together with Germany, invaded the Mediterranean colony.

In June 1941 General William Donovan requested that Fleming write a memorandum describing the structure and functions of a secret service organization; for that, Fleming was rewarded with a .38 Police Positive Colt revolver pistol inscribed, "For Special Services." Parts of this memorandum were later used in the official charter for the OSS, which was dissolved in 1945 following the end of World War II; the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, was created two years later.

In 1942 Fleming formed an Auxiliary Unit known as 30AU or 30 Assault Unit that he nicknamed his own "Red Indians"; it was specifically trained in lock-picking, safe-cracking, forms of unarmed combat, and other techniques and skills for collecting intelligence. He meticulously planned all their raids, alongside Patrick Dalzel-Job (one of the Inspirations for James Bond), going so far as to memorize aerial photographs so that their missions could be planned in detail; because of their successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU was greatly enlarged and Fleming's direct control was increased before D-Day.

Fleming even visited 30AU in the field during and after Operation Overlord, especially after the Cherbourg attack, in which he felt that the unit had been incorrectly used as a frontline force rather than as an intelligence gathering unit, and from then on tactics were revised.

It is often reported, and perpetuated by Fleming, that he travelled to Whitby, Ontario to train at Camp X, a top secret training school for Allied forces. However, this is most likely untrue, as no evidence of Fleming having been at Camp X has ever been uncovered, nor do any of the staff recall Fleming ever having been there.