☰ The Dossier ☰
A Tribute to Ian Fleming and the World of James Bond
The morning light filters through Venetian blinds onto classified documents...
// The Fleming Canon //
Ian Fleming wrote fourteen James Bond books between 1953 and 1966. All were written at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye, typically completed in about two months each January-February.
The Novels (in order)
Casino Royale (1953)
Bond's first mission. Le Chiffre. The baccarat game. Vesper Lynd. "The bitch is dead."
Live and Let Die (1954)
Mr. Big's gold smuggling operation. Solitaire. Jamaica and Harlem. The keel-hauling sequence.
Moonraker (1955)
Hugo Drax and his rocket. Set entirely in England. The card game at Blades. Gala Brand.
Diamonds Are Forever (1956)
The diamond pipeline. Tiffany Case. Las Vegas. The Spangled Mob.
From Russia, with Love (1957)
SMERSH's trap. Tatiana Romanova. Red Grant. The Orient Express. JFK's favorite.
Dr. No (1958)
The Caribbean. Doctor Julius No. Honeychile Rider. Crab Key and guano mining.
Goldfinger (1959)
Auric Goldfinger's obsession. Jill and Tilly Masterton. Operation Grand Slam. The game of golf.
For Your Eyes Only (1960)
Short story collection. "From a View to a Kill," "For Your Eyes Only," "Quantum of Solace," "Risico," "The Hildebrand Rarity."
Thunderball (1961)
SPECTRE's nuclear blackmail. Emilio Largo. Domino Vitali. Nassau and underwater action.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
Experimental first-person female narrator. Vivienne Michel tells the story. Fleming later disowned it.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)
Bond's marriage to Tracy. Blofeld's Piz Gloria clinic. Biological warfare. The tragic ending.
You Only Live Twice (1964)
Bond broken after Tracy's death. Japan. Blofeld's "Garden of Death." Bond's amnesia.
The Man with the Golden Gun (1965)
Bond brainwashed by the KGB. Francisco Scaramanga. Jamaica again. Fleming died before final revisions.
Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966, posthumous)
Final short stories. "Octopussy," "The Living Daylights," "The Property of a Lady," "007 in New York."
The Continuation Novels
After Fleming's death, other authors continued Bond's adventures: Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, Anthony Horowitz, and others.
"I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, and 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Dorian Doolittle.'"
— Ian Fleming on naming his character