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.
I seem to go from censorship to preservation to special collections. Thank you for not minding. I was reading some back issues of The Book Collector and thought this was something most of us didn't know about Fleming. That Lilly Library is killer!
Whaat a surprise to discover that Ian Fleming had this other side to his interests. I wish he had lived longer to develop his collection and perhaps write more about the themes he was looking for.
I can't help it. I had too much for a short substack so I'm adding a bit more in these comments.
====
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.
Great post.
elm
poster of the one i didn't see
Yet again you astonish and educate. Who'd have imagined, Ian Fleming, Man of Mystery, Oh, and he also wrote the James Bond books.
I seem to go from censorship to preservation to special collections. Thank you for not minding. I was reading some back issues of The Book Collector and thought this was something most of us didn't know about Fleming. That Lilly Library is killer!
Feel free to post your grocery list. It is guaranteed to get six hearts.
Whaat a surprise to discover that Ian Fleming had this other side to his interests. I wish he had lived longer to develop his collection and perhaps write more about the themes he was looking for.
The podcast describes that he also saw as a smart investment.