Casino Royale. by FLEMING, Ian - 1953

London: Jonathan Cape,, 1953. The debut of Bond and Fleming First edition, first impression, in the first issue dust jacket, without the Sunday Times review on the front flap. According to Biondi and Pickard, the jacket "is genuinely rare in fresh condition", as here. The author's first work, it saw an initial print run of 4,760 copies, of which 4,728 were bound up. "Many of these went to public libraries and we believe that less than half of the first printing was sold to the public" (Biondi & Pickard). Fleming wrote this and the subsequent Bond novels at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, where he resided from January to February each year as part of his contracted holiday leave as foreign news manager of Kemsley Newspapers. As Fleming himself stated, his goal with Casino Royale was to write "the spy novel of all spy novels" (cited in Gilbert). Octavo. Original black boards, spine lettered in red, heart device on front cover in red, bottom edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. A few marks to covers, contents fresh; jacket remarkably crisp and bright, vertical crease on front spine fold, couple of small splash marks to front flap, unclipped: a near-fine copy in like jacket. Biondi & Pickard 40; Gilbert A1a (1.1).