From Russia, With Love.

FLEMING, Ian [Sean Connery].

Item Number: 112358

London: Jonathan Cape, 1957.

First edition of the fifth novel in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Sean Connery on the title page. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with light rubbing to the extremities. Jacket design by Richard Chopping. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

"Described in the Times Literary Supplement as ‘most brilliant,’ the book was a great commercial success and helped to launch Fleming as a best-selling novelist It ended with Bond seriously wounded and nearly killed by fugu poison from the sex organs of the Japanese globe-fish While the ending was not quite Sherlock Holmes and his apparently fatal last struggle with evil at the Reichenbach Falls, Fleming had provided himself with an opportunity to remove his hero. He was not, however, to take it. There was public agitation when 007 was reported dead. Bond was irreplaceable" (Black, 27, 30). "This is a very highly sought after title, as it is generally considered the best novel in the series and the best of the movies, as well" (Biondi & Pickard, 44). Made into the 1964 film of the same title with Sean Connery as Bond and Lotte Lenya as ex-KGB agent Rosa Klebb.