Ian Fleming- Astounding Book Collector
"books that had started something" or "made things happen"
Ian Fleming1 was the founder and proprietor of The Book Collector,2 the famous British antiquarian quarterly.3
(He also wrote the James Bond novels).4
Fleming’s book collecting was focused on books that signalised a right-angle turn in the world’s thought on any particular subject.5
"the primary printed sources for the great discoveries, inventions, and scientific theories of modern times”
Flemings impressive collection of first editions focused on the crucial books of modern civilisation; TV, atomic fission, X-Rays, birth control, the motor car, penicillin; topics which he said “started something.” 6
Fleming remarked in 1964:
“All I had done up to that time, aside from a great deal of studying, had been to begin collecting. I had decided, after concerning myself with first editions for a time, that I would collect books that signalised a right-angle turn in the world’s thought on any particular subject, a book of permanent value in the history of the world. I began to think through every human activity, from art to sports and physics and whatnot, and with the help of a great friend of mine who is still my bookseller, we got out a tremendous list of the great books of the world since 1800, which we arbitrarily decided to make the starting date.”7
The Fleming Collection is held at the Indiana University in Bloomington, Lilly Library.8 There have been several exhibitions including one in 2017-2018.9 Online you can read “The “Ian Fleming Collection of 19th-20th Century Source Material Concerning Western Civilization together with the Originals of the James Bond-007 Tales.”10
The Fleming Collection was an attempt to gather together, in first editions, the original contributions of the scientists and practical workers, the total body of whose work has been responsible for the modern revolution.
Thus, in relation to aeronautics, he had the original edition of Lilienthal's great work on gliding; the first printed papers of the Wright Brothers—which incidentally pay tribute to the fundamental nature of Lilienthal's experiments—and Langley's description of his machine, which has strong claims to having forestalled the Wrights. —Percy Muir (antiquarian bookseller, book collector, and bibliographer.)11
Here is an online an interview with Percy Muir on his work with Fleming to collect First editions. (includes observations on books as investment).12
Buckton, Oliver (2021). The World Is Not Enough : A Biography of Ian Fleming: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Fergusson, James. 2017. “Ian Fleming & Book Collecting [Special Issue].” The Book Collector 66 (1): 11–214.
RARE BOOK REVIEW. 2008. “LIVE AND LET BUY: Celebrating Ian Fleming the Book Collector in His Centenary Year.” pp. 20-27.
“Starting Something: About The Book Collector.“ The Book Collector.
Hopson, James (2018). From Bond Street to Bloomington, Indiana: Ian Fleming’s Book Collection. Artistic License Renewed: The James Bond Literary Magazine (July 30).
Bongiovanni, Domenica (2017). “Why this James Bond collection is in Indiana and the secrets you'll find.” Indystar (Nov, 2).
Silver, Joel. (2017). Ian Fleming: From Bibiophile to Bond. Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington. Exhibit Notes: Ian Fleming (1908-1964) is well known today as the literary creator of master spy James Bond, but long before Bond, Fleming was a collector of rare books, and his collection, along with his specially-bound corrected typescripts of the Bond novels and the first published editions, are housed in the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. Fleming's collection, which was remarkable both in its conception and scope, focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century “books that had started something,” from landmarks in science and technology to instructional volumes on sports and games. Books from Ian Fleming’s personal collection are now on exhibit at the Lilly Library, alongside typescripts and early editions of the James Bond novels.
Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington). The Ian Fleming Collection of 19th-20th Century Source Material Concerning Western Civilization together with the Originals of the James Bond-007 Tales. [4], 3-53 p. : ill., ports., facsims. ; 28 cm. [Lilly Library], [Bloomington, IN] [1971]. This is available online.
Ibid. Includes a Précis, written for the Lilly catalogue by Percy Muir, gives a better account of what the collection is all about than can this necessarily limited catalogue.
The Book Collector's first podcast! Percy Muir's article 'Ian Fleming: A Personal Memoir' from our Spring 1965 issue, read by Rupert Vansittart.
I can't help it. I had too much for a short substack so I'm adding a bit more in these comments.
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Stanley Campbell:
The first inkling the public had of Fleming's hobby came in 1963, a year before his death, but more importantly the year of the film version of Dr No. At the year's end Fleming was a household name throughout the English speaking world. All the more intriguing then, that a London exhibition entitled Printing and the Mind of Man, boasting more than 400
books from 63 libraries and individuals from a dozen countries, should have leant so heavily on the popular author's personal collection. Fleming's goal to collate 'books that marked milestones of progress' paid off as 44 of his own purchases were chosen to appear in the exhibition. Only King's College, Cambridge donated more titles (51). ...Fleming's centenary is not being -allowed to pass without serenade. But it is for his unheralded role as drum-beater for the rare book trade that we owe him most.--RARE BOOK REVIEW. 2008. “LIVE AND LET BUY: Celebrating Ian Fleming the Book Collector in His Centenary Year.”
Yet, apart from a gracious salute by John Hayward in The Book Collector's Commentary for Winter 1964 and a memoir by Percy Muir in the following number, obituaries barely mentioned Fleming's role as a bibliophile. An epitaph was supplied by a reviewer
o{ `printing and the Mind of Man' whose words had been cast in Monotype on r8 March 1964 but never published. He sent a proof to Fleming none the less, in case it might be of interest. It concluded with Elgar's quotation from Ruskin at the end of the manuscript
of The Dream of Gerontius: This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.' --- "IAN FLEMING AND `THE BOOK COLLECTOR' by Fergus Fleming."--in the Book Collector, Spring, 2017.