Thrilling Cities

Jonathan Cape, 1963. Octavo. Original white cloth-backed grey paper-covered boards, spine lettered in gilt, black endpapers. With dust jacket. Housed in a custom black morocco-backed folding box. 48 pages of illustrations from black and white photos. Corners slightly bumped, some browning to edges, a near-fine copy. Minor creases to price-clipped dust jacket with extremities slightly rubbed, a bright and near-fine copy. First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title-page "For Sari, her Christmas present! [kiss] Ian." This copy was given from the author's own batch of copies for presentation in December 1963 (the book having been published in November 1963). The recipient is Sarah Dugdale, part of the Ivor Bryce set, who was a close friend of Ian Fleming during the last 12 years of his life. Accompanying the book is a note regarding the nature of their relationship, from the previous owner, Sari's housemaid and confidante, who had inherited the book in July 2003. The note states that Fleming and Dugdale "met in 1952 when Sarah Dugdale went to the dock in New York, with a mutual friend, to meet Ian Fleming off the Queen Mary". This is a most personal copy, with an intimate and close association. Originally published as two series of articles for the Sunday Times, first from 24 January to 28 February 1960 and then from 31 July to 4 September 1960, Thrilling Cities was the product of a five-week, all-expenses-paid trip to visit the world's most exciting cities. Travelling to thirteen cities, from Hong Kong to Monte Carlo, Fleming gathered material that would furnish much of the backdrop and research for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that would follow. This copy is from the significant Ian Fleming collection of Martin Schøyen (b.1940), with his bookplate. Schøyen's private collection of manuscripts, which span all cultures and all time periods, is one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. Gilbert A16a(1.1). The Schøyen Collection No. 191.