James Bond | Birds of the West Indies, 1960, first UK edition, signed by James Bond

James Bond

Birds of the West Indies. London: Collins, 1960

SIGNED BY JAMES BOND to half-title ("To Iris [?] | Happy birding in the West Indies! | Jim Bond"), FIRST UK EDITION, 8vo, in-text illustrations, publisher's red cloth, illustrated dust-wrapper, very slight marginal fraying to dust-wrapper

"IT STRUCK ME THAT THIS BRIEF, UN-ROMANTIC, ANGLO-SAXON AND YET VERY MASCULINE NAME WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED, AND SO A SECOND JAMES BOND WAS BORN"

The work that gave James Bond his name.

James Bond was an American ornithologist and the leading authority on birds of the West Indies for decades. Fleming owned a copy of this book at Goldeneye, his estate in Jamaica, where he sat down to write Casino Royale in 1952. The author explained:

"I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard." (Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962)

Years later, Fleming wrote in a letter to Mrs Bond: "In return, I can only offer you or James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purpose you may think fit. Perhaps one day your husband will discover a particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion by calling it Ian Fleming" (The New York Times, 17 February 1989)