The James Bond Dossier - From Essay To Book

From Essay To Book

Kingsley Amis had several motives for writing the Dossier. He had recently retired from teaching and wanted to ‘put behind him the more rigid austerities of university life’. He wanted to expand his range as a writer beyond poetry and mainstream fiction. The need to make more money was also a consideration. Primarily, however, he wanted to show the academics that the literature of popular culture could be as substantive as the literature of high culture. In November 1963, he announced to Conquest the idea of writing an essay of some 5,000 words about the James Bond novels. By late 1964, he had expanded the essay to book length, and submitted it to his publisher, Jonathan Cape. In one hundred and sixty pages, The James Bond Dossier methodically catalogues and analyses the activities and minutiae of secret agent 007: the number of men he kills, the women he loves, the villains he thwarts, and the essential background of Ian Fleming’s Cold War world of the 1950s.

After Fleming’s death in August 1964, Glidrose Productions Ltd., owners of the international book rights, asked for Amis’s editorial assessment of the uncompleted manuscript of The Man With The Golden Gun, which Jonathan Cape deemed feeble, and perhaps unpublishable. He reported that the manuscript was publishable, but would require substantial modifications. Because Amis was not the only writer consulted, it remains controversial if his editorial suggestions were implemented, and to what extent Amis contributed directly to the revision of the manuscript. In the event, the Dossier’s publication was delayed a year, because Jonathan Cape asked Amis to include discussion of The Man With the Golden Gun. Both books were published in 1965; later that year, Amis reviewed The Man With the Golden Gun in the New Statesman.