James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007
Encyclopedia
James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 (also James Bond: The Authorised Biography) (1973), by John Pearson
John Pearson (author)
John Pearson is a writer best associated with James Bond creator Ian Fleming.Pearson was Fleming's assistant at the London Sunday Times and would go on to write the first biography of Ian Fleming, 1966's The Life of Ian Fleming....

, is a fictional biography of James Bond; Pearson also wrote the biography The Life of Ian Fleming
The Life of Ian Fleming
The Life of Ian fleming is a biography of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond and author of the children’s book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The biography was written by John Pearson, Fleming’s assistant at the London Sunday Times, in 1966. Pearson later wrote the official, fictional-biography...

(1966).

The Authorised Biography of 007 was not commissioned by Glidrose Publications
Ian Fleming Publications
Ian Fleming Publications is the production company formerly known as both Glidrose Productions Limited and Glidrose Publications Limited, named after its founders John Gliddon and Norman Rose...

. It originated as a spoof novel for publisher Sidgwick & Jackson
Sidgwick & Jackson
Sidgwick & Jackson is an imprint of publishing company Pan Macmillan. It was founded in Britain in 1908. Notable early Sidgwick and Jackson authors include poet Rupert Brooke and novelist E.M. Forster...

, however, Pearson knew Peter Janson-Smith, the Glidrose chairman, who published it. Consequently, this is the only James Bond book from Glidrose, between 1953 and 1987, not first published by Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...

, additionally, it is the only Bond novel with a shared copyright credit; Pearson is the only Bond novelist so recognised.

The novel's canonical
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...

 status as biography is debatable. Some fans consider it canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...

 with Ian Fleming's James Bond novel series, while other aficionados consider it apocryphal. Elements of the biography are contradicted by "official" Bond fiction, notably Charlie Higson
Charlie Higson
Charles Murray Higson , more commonly known as Charlie Higson - also Switch - is an English actor, comedian, author and former singer...

's Young Bond
Young Bond
Young Bond is a series of five young adult spy novels by Charlie Higson featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond as a young teenage boy attending school at Eton College in the 1930s...

 series, which suggests that James Bond was born in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, as opposed to Pearson's suggestion that Bond was born in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Unlike the later Bond novels by John Gardner
John Gardner (thriller writer)
John Edmund Gardner was an English spy novelist, most notably for the James Bond series.-Early life:Gardner was born in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland. He graduated from St John's College, Cambridge and did postgraduate study at Oxford...

 and Raymond Benson
Raymond Benson
Raymond Benson is an American author best known for being the official author of the adult James Bond novels from 1997 to 2003. Benson was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from Permian High School in Odessa in 1973...

, which are not of (although still based upon) Fleming's continuity, such is not the case with Pearson's book, along with the continuation novel Colonel Sun
Colonel Sun
Colonel Sun , by Kingsley Amis, is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964; Glidrose Productions used the collective pseudonym "Robert Markham", for British novelist Kingsley Amis, with the intent of so publishing other novels by different writers...

, by Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, (to which Pearson refers). As those books occur in the same time as Fleming's Bond novels, their being canonical with Fleming's books is debatable, yet Pan Books
Pan Books
Pan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....

 one British publisher of Bond novels, includes Pearson's book, James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, as an official series entry of their first paperback edition series.

Plot summary

The premise of James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 is that James Bond is based upon a real MI6 agent. Fleming hinted so in You Only Live Twice, in Bond's obituary, that his adventures were the basis of a series of "sensational novels"; illustrating this contention, that novel's comic strip adaptation used covers from Fleming's James Bond novels.

Writing autobiographically, Pearson begins the story with his own recruitment to MI6. Already, the department had assigned Ian Fleming to write novels based upon the real agent; Fleming was to be truthful about the agent's adventures. The idea was to hide the truth, of Bond's exploits, in plain sight; along the way, Fleming created fictional tales, such as Moonraker, to keep the Soviets guessing what was fact and what was not. Pearson's also incorporates Fleming's flippant claim to not having written The Spy Who Loved Me, but that Vivienne Michel mysteriously sent him the manuscript.

Based upon the success of his Fleming biography, The Life of Ian Fleming (1966), MI6 instruct Pearson to write 007's biography; he is introduced to a retired James Bond — who is in his fifties, yet healthy, sun-tanned, and with Honeychile Ryder, the heroine of Dr. No. Most of James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 is Bond telling his life story, including school and first MI6 missions, referring to most every novel and short story and, notably, to Colonel Sun
Colonel Sun
Colonel Sun , by Kingsley Amis, is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964; Glidrose Productions used the collective pseudonym "Robert Markham", for British novelist Kingsley Amis, with the intent of so publishing other novels by different writers...

, the Robert Markham
Robert Markham
Robert Markham is a pseudonym created by Glidrose Publications in the mid-1960s. By 1967, Glidrose, the publishers of the James Bond novel series created by Ian Fleming, had exhausted all available material written by Fleming before his death in 1964...

 series-continuation novel. At conclusion, as Bond rushes to another mission (contrary to mandatory retirement), John Pearson is invited to assume Ian Fleming's scribal duties, like Dr. Watson assumed with Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

.

In fact, Glidrose Publications
Ian Fleming Publications
Ian Fleming Publications is the production company formerly known as both Glidrose Productions Limited and Glidrose Publications Limited, named after its founders John Gliddon and Norman Rose...

 considered John Pearson's becoming the new, series writer; despite good reviews and sales of James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, nothing happened.

Publication history

  • UK first hardback edition: 1973 Sidgwick & Jackson
    Sidgwick & Jackson
    Sidgwick & Jackson is an imprint of publishing company Pan Macmillan. It was founded in Britain in 1908. Notable early Sidgwick and Jackson authors include poet Rupert Brooke and novelist E.M. Forster...

  • U.S. first hardback edition: 1974 William Morrow & Company
  • UK first paperback edition: 1975 Pan Books
    Pan Books
    Pan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....

  • U.S. first paperback edition: March 1975 Pyramid Books
    Pyramid Books
    Jove Books, formerly Pyramid Books, is a paperback publishing company, founded in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers . The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an...



Out of print since the 1980s, a reprinting of the book was released in 2008. The reprint shortens the book's title to James Bond: The Authorised Biography.

External links

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