Books That Had Started Something: Ian Fleming's book collection

Joel SILVER

Published by London: Queen Anne Press, 2017

About this Item

Black card wrappers, printed paper label. Edition limited to 125 numbered copies signed by the publishers, Ian Fleming's nephews Fergus Fleming (Queen Anne Press) and James Fleming (The Book Collector). Article reprinted from the Spring 2017 special issue of The Book Collector ("Ian Fleming & Book Collecting"), in a handsome edition letterpress-printed in Monotype Fournier by Stan Lane of Gloucester Typesetting; loosely inserted in this copy is an offprint of the original article (red card wrappers, [150 copies printed]), with 13 pages of illustrations - of the first golf manual, the Communist Party Manifesto, Lumière's Le Cinématographe, Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys, Einstein's Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätsheorie, Fleming's bookshelves at Sevenhampton Place, the typescript of Live and Let Die etc. Ian Fleming ran the Queen Anne Press, first publishers of The Book Collector, from 1951 to 1955, and owned the journal from 1955 until his death. Starting in the 1930s, with the help of his friend the bookseller Percy Muir, he assembled a remarkable collection of "Books That Had Started Something", later a principal source for the 1963 "Printing and the Mind of Man" exhibition. During Fleming's lifetime, David Randall of the Lilly Library at Indiana University courted him in the hope of securing the collection, but it wasn't until six years after Fleming's death in 1964 that Muir completed the sale. Joel Silver, the present Director of the Lilly Library, drawing on Randall's correspondence with Fleming and Muir, tells the extraordinary history of Fleming's collection and its final arrival in Indiana. Seller Inventory # 20M300207

Bibliographic Details

Title: Books That Had Started Something: Ian ...

Publisher: London: Queen Anne Press

Publication Date: 2017

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)