Jonathan Cape printed nearly 5,000 copies for its first run, and they sold quickly. Finally, at Peter’s urging, they brought it out on April 13, 1953. Fleming himself seemed unenthusiastic about the book, and at first the publishers were reluctant to take it on. The novel was finished in two months and went through several hands before it was sent to the publishing house Jonathan Cape, which was handling books authored by Fleming’s brother Peter.

His position with Kemsley News allowed him to live for part of the year in Jamaica. In 1951, he had become managing director of Queen Anne Press, a small publisher of quality books by well-known authors. He had gone back to journalism when the war ended and had been the foreign editor of Kemsley News, which owned the Sunday Times. Their long-standing affair had produced a child while she was married to another man, but by this time they were finally free to get together.įleming was living in Jamaica at the time, having visited there during the war and vowing that one day he would make it his home.

When Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, was published in 1953, it was the product of more than a decade of Ian Fleming’s imagination but only about two months of actual writing work.įleming began the novel in January 1952 as he was anticipating getting married to Ann Charteris, a woman he had known and been in love with for nearly two decades.

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