DOUBLE O SEVEN, JAMES BOND: A REPORT

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Publisher's original black cloth with silver titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm with just a touch of bumping a the spine tips, the boards bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owners' marks. Complete with the very lightly rubbed dustwrapper that is bright and without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped (18s net to the lower front flap).

Inscribed by the author in black ink on the front endpaper "For Robin [underlined] / From Fred / 16 Aug 1974". Scarce thus. The first full length critical study of James Bond (preceding Kingsley Amis' The James Bond Dossier), and the only such book of its type to be approved by Ian Fleming (who died in the same month and year of first publication). O. F. ('Fred') Snelling was an illustrator, film critic and biographer who became a respected member of the antiquarian trade working as a clerk for the London auctioneer Hodgson's, later Sotheby's Rare Book Department, where he first met the James Bond author and rare book collector Ian Fleming.