FIRST EDITION, SECOND IMPRESSION, published by Jonathan Cape, 1959, hardcover, 318 pages, no dust jacket, previous owner's name stamped to endpaper, otherwise condition: very good.
Goldfinger is the seventh novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Written in January and February 1958, it was first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 23 March 1959. The story centres on the investigation by the British Secret Service operative James Bond into the gold-smuggling activities of Auric Goldfinger, who is also suspected by MI6 of being connected to SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence organisation. As well as establishing the background to the smuggling operation, Bond uncovers a much larger plot: Goldfinger plans to steal the gold reserves of the United States from Fort Knox.
Fleming had long been fascinated with gold. He was a collector of Spanish doubloons, and he commissioned a gold-plated typewriter from the Royal Typewriter Company, he wrote with a gold-tipped ballpoint pen and included the theft or obtaining of gold in several of his stories. When researching for Goldfinger, Fleming reinforced his knowledge of gold by sending a questionnaire to an expert at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmith sone of the livery companies of the City of London who assay precious metals for purity with a list of queries about gold, its properties and the background of the industry, including smuggling.
The cover's "macabre symbolism memorably expresses the novel's themes of greed, sex and death". The book was dedicated to "gentle reader, William Plomer". Plomer was a South African novelist, poet and literary editor. He became chief reader and literary adviser to Jonathan Cape from 1937 to 1940, where he recognised the saleability of, and edited the first and many more of Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Fleming dedicated Goldfinger to Plomer.
