London, Jonathan Cape, 1963
The only special limited edition of any of the 'James Bond' novels. The second title in the 'Blofeld trilogy', preceded by Thunderball (1961) and concluding with You Only Live Twice (1964). In the novel Bond adopts the guise of College of Arms herald Sir Hilary Bray to allow him access to Blofeld's secret lair on the Piz Gloria, a fictional mountain top in the Swiss Alps. Whilst there Bond discovers SPECTRE's latest diabolical scheme, to destroy the British & Irish economies via a group of female patients at Blofeld's clinic, brainwashed into becoming 'mules' for biological agents to be smuggled into Britain and Ireland. The novel is also significant in the Bond canon for the tragic love-interest supplied by Contessa Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo.
First edition; 8vo (200 x 135 mm), number 195 of 250 copies signed by the author, frontispiece portrait of Fleming by Amherst Villiers, the usual slight age-toning to paper, otheriwse fine; publisher's vellum-backed, black cloth boards, top edge gilt, minor toning to vellum, otherwise remarkably good, in the original transparent dust-jacket, small chips to extremities, otherwise very good.
Gilbert A11a
First edition; 8vo (200 x 135 mm), number 195 of 250 copies signed by the author, frontispiece portrait of Fleming by Amherst Villiers, the usual slight age-toning to paper, otheriwse fine; publisher's vellum-backed, black cloth boards, top edge gilt, minor toning to vellum, otherwise remarkably good, in the original transparent dust-jacket, small chips to extremities, otherwise very good.
Gilbert A11a
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