James Bond - the 'final' Jonathan Cape editions: (Part 1)

Collecting 'final editions' of the hardback Cape James Bond books is becoming increasingly popular. But you need to both be quick, but also patient, if you want to get in on the act...

It’s been a busy last week for James Bond fans, with the confirmation EON is finally ceding creative control of the films to Amazon.

But rather than add to the ever-growing online ‘is Bond dead?’ debate, I thought it was a prescient moment to take a look at what really was the ‘end’ of James Bond (from a literary point of view) – the very final Jonathan Cape hardback printings of Ian Fleming's beloved books.

As we al know, Ian Fleming’s books were first printed in hardback form between 1953 to 1966 – but the trajectory of how they continued to be published by Jonathan Cape till their very final printings is – I think – an interesting one.

Jonathan Cape hardback Bond books throughout the 1970s-80s

Very broadly Ian Fleming's novels remained popular and most importantly, popular enough to continue to be printed in hardback form throughout the 1970s and they just about broke into the 1980s.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Dr No, Goldfinger and Thunderball all share top billing for being the hardback Capes that journeyed the longest into the 1980s: all closing at 1983 (see my full listing below of final print editions, and the year they were published).

For many, this meant they reached double-figures in terms of number of impressions. By thhe time Dr No's time was up, for instance, it had fitted in a respectable 12 printings; OHMSS had reached 11 and Goldfinger had managed 10.

The book that displayed the greatest popularity was Live and Live Die – which managed the most impressions of any of the books (15) during its Cape hardback life (see copyright page picture below). However, being only the second book in the series, it arguably had a longer go at it to get squeeze more impressions in.

Casino Royale managed 13 impressions before its final impression in 1980; while From Russia With Love got to 12 by 1981. Moonraker achieved 11 – also up till 1981.

Not all printings were equal though

Live and Let Die had a prolific printing history, with 15 editions in total, and a new printing almost annually until 1966

Thunderball's print history is much more sparse - notching up just six printings over a 22 year period

What's interesting, is that from just a glance at the published dates of the books, not all of the later impressions of the novels were as regular as – say Live and Let Die, which pretty much saw a new impression every year well into the 1960s, before tailing off (see picture above).

By comparison, Thunderball’s 22-year print period only saw it printed six times – averaging out at one printing every three and a half years. (see images above).

But actually, Thunderball's publication was far less regular as that. There was a six year gap between the second (1964) and third printings (1970), while thereafter the final three printings also only happened after fairly lengthy breaks – in 1974, 1977 and 1983 respectively.

But the record for the longest gap between editions goes to The Spy Who Loved Me.

This is a real outlier book in a number of different ways. Three reprints (four printings in total in a single year - 1962), sees this book being one of the most reprinted books ever in a calendar year. It then had a subsequent new printing each year between 1963-65. But after that, there was massive 15 year gap between the penultimate edition in 1965 and the final edition in 1980 - see picture below. It was almost as if Cape needed/wanted a last hurrah before calling time on it in 1980, especially after such a long period where no new printings were made.

According to Gilbert, the penultimate 7th impression of The Spy Who Loved Me (the last impression for which a print-run ledger exists), saw 11,385 copies bound-up. But this was presumably enough to enable Cape to stretch these books out over a period of the next 11 years, up to 1976 (rather than keep ordering a specific new impression). One guesses that after these copies ran out, and there was still perception of residual demand, a final (unknown) edition was printed in 1980.

Contrast The Spy Who Loved Me's very peripatetic printing history with that of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Of its 11 impressions – spanning a period of 20 years – a staggering five of them were all from the same year of initial publication – 1963 (see above).

This fact sees this particular title hold the record for the most impressions in any single year, of any Bond book. And yes, it is undoubtedly due to the movie series just beginning. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the first book to proceed the start of the film series the previous autumn. It was also because of the popularity of Dr No (the movie), that the idea of producing a limited edition signed set of 250 copies of On Her Majesty's Secret Service was entertained.

Perhaps because the popularity of the Fleming books were waning slightly by the late1960s, You Only Live Twice saw just five impressions between 1964 and 1979. The Man With The Golden Gun, meanwhile, managed just one more – six – by the time it bowed out in 1979.

I’m personally surprised Diamonds Are Forever only managed 8 impressions by the time it’s final printing came out in 1979 (averaging just one printing every three years in the 23 years it was in print for). Such a long period in print would normally indicate a few more editions.

Collecting ‘last prints’...

Such are the number of impressions the hardbacks went through, that if you wanted to collect every single impression of every Jonathan Cape hardback, you would need a book shelf able to accommodate 126 books (although some say 125, as there is some debate as to whether one particular impression - the 11th print of Dr actually exists – but that’s for another time!)

For many – of course – this is an unrealistic ambition, however, I’ve met more than a few collectors who have now decided to set themselves a target of collecting all of the ‘last editions’ as a way of complementing their first edition collection.

I am also in the process of doing exactly the same, and the main picture of this blog (plus all of the other pictures below), show my own personal 'last prints' collection so far.

As you might be able to see, I'm missing (tantalizingly), just one book now: the elusive final print of Dr No.

...but collecting this set is not as easy as it seems

A lucky find! A recently bought this group of six 'last prints' all at once - four of which I didn't have

There’s something of a symmetry in having a first and last edition hardback set – which is why collecting ‘last prints’ is so appealing.

But collecting these books is by no means easy.

I've spent many years constantly searching to get to what I have today - and some of these I would still like to upgrade, if or when I see any come up.

I will also admit, however, that along the way, I’ve been extremely lucky too.

Recently, I managed to pick up four last prints from a single collector all in one go.

In this one foul swoop I managed to get fine condition last impression examples of Moonraker, Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service (as well as spares of The Man With the Golden Gun, and You Only Live Twice (see picture left).

But not even this was worry-free! In what eventually became a bit of a saga, I had an extremely long-drawn out wait for these particular titles to safely arrive with me. This was mainly because they were posted (from a private collector in Canada), the very day before a six week national post strike began.

My package never made it out of the country before the total lockdown occurred, some 24 hours later. So I was left waiting (hoping and praying), that these books hadn't got lost sitting in a warehouse somewhere. A backlog of millions of items had to be worked through before these important, scarce books finally got on their way to me.

Scarcity of appearance:

The painful wait for these six books above was all the more painful because I knew these last edition books simply do not turn up with any degree of frequency. The fear these Canadian books would get lost was palpable.

Although later print books have started to become more visible on the main auction platforms – often because first editions have become out of reach for many – it's still the case that most of what you see are the ‘mid’ editions rather than the actual 'final' ones.

You tend to see lots of 5th print The Spy Who Loved Me books at the moment – for some reason – but you rarely see an 8th.

The are a couple of very good reasons for this:

1) Most went to libraries: 

By the time the very final editions were being published, bookshops (though they did take small numbers), were not the main outlet. Most final prints went to libraries – which for books is the first stage in a journey to destruction! If they weren’t getting trashed in the library system, they were typically withdrawn, and either disposed-of or given away.

2) Their probable print runs were tiny: 

Not even official Ian Fleming bibliographer Jon Gilbert has been able to find print run numbers for the final printings. But they are likely to be incredibly small. Starting the trend, there is no final print run recorded for Casino Royal. What we do know, however, is that the last known print run was just 2,991 copies (for the 7th impression in 1962). What we also know, is that up till then, later impressions of Casino Royale only tended to range between 2,-000-3,000 copies only. The last fully documented ledger for Live and Let Die was for 3,827 'between 1967-1972' (the final impression was in 1982). The final print run ledger for Moonraker was the 8th (1965) printing, at 6,500 copies. The last known print run for Diamonds are Forever showed 8,500 copies, but this was for the 6th printing (in 1964, so long before the final print in 1979) – and so on. Just over 5,000 copies of From Russia With Love were printed of the 1966, 9th print, some way before the final 12th print in 1982.

By way of conclusion, I would argue that it’s no exaggeration to say that the number of last prints is significantly – and I mean significantly – smaller than all of the actual ‘first editions’.

We can see this was already the case with the earliest books, but this difference is arguably even more pronounced with the later books – books that had large first edition print runs to begin with but arguably tiny final print runs by comparison.

For instance: The Man With the Golden Gun had a first impression print run of 82,000 – and that likely met demand, because by the time the third (1965) printing came out, numbers of bound copies fell drastically to just 14,624. This is, again, the final time actual print numbers are revealed. The final printing of The Man With The Golden Gun was much, much later in 1979, and can barely have amounted to more than a few thousand at most.

It seems that beyond the mid 1960s, all specific print run numbers are lost.

Pub quiz fact: the last known ledger for Thunderball was actually its second print – 10,007 (nice!) - in 1964.

But beyond that we don’t know how many books were bound for the final, 6th print – some 20 years later, in 1983.

Last prints present a fantastic collecting challenge

Given most collectors do love the thrill of tracking numerically-rare books down, the appeal of collecting ‘last prints’ can certainly be understood.

They are rare, but with a bit of patience, luck, and perseverance, they can still found, and most importantly, they can still be bought relatively cheaply.

This is especially-so if sellers don’t know the ins and out of each book’s printing history, and to them, it’s just an ‘old book’.

Most of my books have been picked up for between £25-50 each, and because they are relatively newly-published, when I have found them, they've actually tended to be in pretty good overall condition.

BUT....

I would argue that if you do want to start collecting these books, START NOW, because values are now climbing all the time.  

How to start

Firstly, get clued up about which books comprise the final editions. You'll need to know this just in case you see any in the wild, or online.

Here’s a handy aide-mémoire of all the 'final editions' - their edition and year published:

Book                                                                     Final Print                             Year

Casino Royale                                                13th print                                1980

Live and Let Die                                                       15th print                                1982

Moonraker                                                                 11th print                                1981

Diamonds Are Forever                                           8th print                                  1979

From Russia With Love                                         12th print                                1981

Dr No                                                                           12th print                                1983

Goldfinger                                                                 10th print                                1983

For Your Eyes Only                                      8th print                                  1979

Thunderball                                                              6th print                                  1983

The Spy Who Loved Me                                          8th print                                  1980

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service                          11th print                                1983

You Only Live Twice                                                5th print                                   1979

The Man With the Golden Gun                              6th print                                   1979

Octopussy & The Living Daylights                           1st print                                   1966

Once you start collecting these books, there are several paths you can follow.

Getting any old book: Because they turn up so infrequently, I started where most will – by just trying to get ‘any’ last print that I saw – library or otherwise, and even if the condition wasn't great.

Upgrading books: As I got more into it though, I started to try and ‘upgrade’ good books I already had for ‘better’ books – condition-wise.

Non-library books: Now I’m aiming for what I believe is the toughest set to assemble – great condition books that are NOT library books.

Given most last printings have tiny print runs to start with, an even smaller percentage of this tiny run are non-library copies. To me, these truly are the rarities to try and hunt down.

So far I’m pretty proud to say that 8 of my 13 books are non-library.

Make sure you catch my next few blogs!

This week I’ve only given my last print set a cursory reveal, so in the next few weeks I’m going to be spending a bit more time looking at each book in a bit more detail.

I’ll be revealing some of the main (and no so main) differences that these interesting ‘last print’ titles demonstrate. So make sure you come back soon.