After finishing the first draft of Casino Royale, Ian Fleming rewarded himself with a Royal Quiet Deluxe Portable gold-plated typewriter. Fleming bought the gold-plated version from a New York dealer in 1952 as a trophy and wrote to his friend Ivar Bryce in New York asking him to bring the typewriter over on his next trip…
Thrilling Cities is Bond creator Ian Fleming’s collection of travel writing from his 1959 round the world adventure for the Sunday Times. His assignment: “Make a trip of the most exciting cities of the world and describe them in beautiful, beautiful prose — within a month.” It’s his view of thirteen cities he visited in two trips…
Ian Fleming had many homes from home but none more so than at his great friend’s farm in southern Vermont. He used to visit his friend Ivar Bryce at Black Hole Hollow Farm right on the border between New York and Vermont. Fleming’s first visit to Vermont was to visit Bryce who he had first met…
The cover of From Russia, with Love (1957) was similarly in trompe l’oeil style, the imagery of rose and dew drop being specified by Fleming, the Smith & Wesson revolver lent by the author. Fleming asked Geoffrey Boothroyd, a firearms expert, if he could lend his illustrator, Richard Chopping, one of his guns to be painted for the…
Adam Blakeney, Senior Specialist in Modern Literature at Peter Harrington, describes why Fleming’s James Bond first editions books have all the qualities of a highly collectible series. http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/2011/04/collecting-james-bond-first-editions/ Incidental Intelligence Established in 1969, Peter Harrington has become one of the leading rare books firms in the world. Adam Blakeney is the Senior Specialist of Modern Literature in the 20th-century…
These Pan Books dust jackets, all borrow elements from the Richard Chopping style of design. The flat design, assorted paraphernalia, danger, death, love, flies, flora and fauna. Pan Books produced some entertaining covers, which quite literally look thrown together, rather like a car boot sale. They do capture the spirit of Bond’s world though and…
Between 2004 and 2008, the scriptwriter and League of Gentlemen actor Mark Gatiss produced his Lucifer Box trilogy. Mark Thomas’s art for Black Butterfly adroitly Chopping’s style, right down to the “wood” backdrop common to all his Bond covers. The dustjacket explicitly references the late Richard Chopping’s his jacket for The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) courtesy of designer Ben Willsher. There’s also a…
The Saturday Book was an annual miscellany, published 1941-1975, reaching 34 volumes. A final compilation entitled The Best of the Saturday Book was published in 1981. The publisher throughout was Hutchinson. The Saturday Book provided literary and artistic commentary about life in Great Britain during the Second World War and ensuing decades. It covered a…
Richard Chopping’s work on the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service dust jacket proved to be troublesome for the artist, because he felt that perspective was not his strong suit. The cover did not feature the usual juxtaposition of beauty, danger and death, which, especially considering the content of this particular novel, is unusual. Instead, this…
You Only Live Twice was published in the UK on 16 March 1964, by Jonathan Cape and cost sixteen shillings. There were 62,000 pre-orders for the book, a significant increase over the 42,000 advance orders for the hardback first edition of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Richard Chopping, cover artist for The Spy Who Loved Me, was engaged for the design. On 17…
The Spy Who Loved Me was published on 16 April 1962 in the UK as a hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape; it was 221 pages long and cost 15 shillings. Artist Richard Chopping once again undertook the cover art, and raised his fee from the 200 guineas he had charged for Thunderball, to 250 guineas. The artwork included a commando knifewhich was borrowed from…
In 1979 Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications) approached John Gardner and asked him to revive Ian Fleming’s James Bond series of novels. Between 1981 and 1996, Gardner wrote fourteen James Bond novels, and the novelizations of two Bond films. Gardner stated that he wanted “to bring Mr Bond into the 1980s”, although he retained the ages of the characters as they…
When the Fleming estate decided to resurrect Bond in 1981 with a new series of novels, Chopping was commissioned to paint the cover for British thriller writer John Gardner’s “Licence Renewed.” Chopping’s cover of a Browning 9 mm automatic, with pearls, flowers and—yes—a fly evokes several Fleming covers, most notably “From Russia, With Love.” Artists…
Carte Blanche is written by best selling thriller novelist Jeffery Deaver and takes place in the present day over a short period of time, and sees Bond visit three or four exotic locations around the globe, one of which is Dubai. Three variations of the UK “Carte Blanche” hardcover edition: Signed and numbered (1500) collectors edition…
Unused cover artwork for the James Bond continuation novel “Devil May Care”. Art by Mark Stutzman, 20×14 inch, gouache on illustration paper
Richard Chopping would never have seen himself as a printmaker – later in life he came to see himself more as an author than an artist. But his career began at the age of 25 with these illustrations for British Butterflies, in the series of Puffin Picture Books. Chopping’s love of nature was evident in…
Chopping expanded his canvas, so to speak, for the final work he collaborated with Fleming on The Man with The Golden Gun. Because Scramanga’s golden pistol was too long to confine to a single panel, the artwork extended to the back of the jacket. Apparently book sellers were not enamored with the experiment because it…
In total, there were 62 Letters including: 12 Typed Letters Signed by Fleming to Chopping; 9 Letters from Chopping, mostly copies, including one carbon and one fair copy to Fleming; and 41 letters to Chopping by others, including one of the directors of Fleming’s publisher Jonathan Cape Limited, Fleming’s secretary, and others involved in the production…
Since Octopussy and The Living Daylights was published postumously, it allowed Chopping free reign, and so he filled the painting with his visual trademark, flies. The first edition, published by Jonathan Cape on June 23rd 1966, only contained the two titular short stories. Over the years, later editions have included two more short stories: The…
The jacket to Thunderball, in which Fleming specified a skeletal hand, was trouble-free in comparison with the legal hassles the contents of the book brought about. Writing to Chopping about ideas for the cover of Thunderball, Fleming said that the covers were “marvelous” and offered to increase Chopping’s fee, perhaps to 100 guineas. Chopping asked…
Artistic Licence Renewed 