Waiting in the shadows are two of Ian Fleming's most vividly drawn villains: Red Grant, SMERSH's deadliest assassin, and the sinister operations chief Rosa Klebb - five feet four inches of pure killing power. From Russia, With Love; [together with] On Her Majesty's Secret Service; [and] Murder Before Breakfast [From a View to a Kill]. Overall, this is a stunning surviving copy from the original 15,000 printed in 1957 and is in very good condition.

Folio commissioned Hokyoung Kim for the artwork, while the late author’s wife, Wendy Benchley, provides a fascinating new introduction. He was unofficially Fleming's Editor-in Chief, and the novel Goldfinger is dedicated to him [Gilbert, p. Woollacott and Bennett agree, and maintain that "Bond embodied the imaginary possibility that England might once again be placed at the centre of world affairs during a period when its world power status was visibly and rapidly declining.Christopher Moran, "Ian Fleming and CIA Director Allen Dulles: The Very Best of Friends", James Bond in World and Popular Culture, 2012. The first great English detective novel, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is presented in a Folio Society limited edition of 750 numbered copies. Enoch branched off in 1948, to establish the New American Library; Signet Paperbacks being their major imprint. This is also the first novel in which Bond receives a gadget from Q-Branch, although Q himself is not featured.

This definitive edition is "the most comprehensive collection of the writings of Ian Fleming to be published, including all of the author's original titles as issued in book-form editions and, in a brand-new volume, a collection of his journalism, some of which appears here for the first time" (Gilbert, p. Fleming's literary estate acquired the press the year before this publication, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the author's birth. From Russia, With Love: Episodes had been considered by the London Evening Standard before the rights were sold to the Daily Express, who had serialized the previous Ian Fleming novel Diamonds are Forever, and who would similarly issue the present title just before release of the British hardback, upon which Fleming commented "Let us hope they don't murder the book too much before your [Cape's] publication date" (Jonathan Cape Archive, Special Collections, Reading University).It sums up the curious contempt which the man who dreams about crime must always feel when he meets the men who merely deal with it. James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming's masterful spy thriller. Once there, Bond forms a comradeship with Darko Kerim, head of the British service's station in Turkey. To make Bond a more rounded character, Fleming put further aspects of his personality into his creation. This is a fairly clean copy of the "Pistol" jacket, some brown traces at contact edges, and a darkening where the spine label has been carefully removed.

Fleming's short stories were heavily promoted by his agent Peter Janson-Smith prior to their appearances in book form, a practice Fleming both acknowledged and defended in his writings to his publisher. Fleming's trip to Istanbul in June 1955 to cover an Interpol conference for The Sunday Times was a source of much of the background information in the story. Chancellor put the events of From Russia, with Love in 1955; Griswold considers the story to have taken place between June and August 1954. Later, in Paris, after successfully delivering Romanova and the booby-trapped Spektor to his superiors, Bond meets Rosa Klebb. According to Higson, Fleming spent the first four novels changing the style of his books, and his approach to his characters, but in From Russia, with Love the author "finally hits on the classic Bond formula, and he happily moved into his most creative phase".

Original black cloth, titles to spine and revolver and rose motif to front cover in metallic red and silver. It suffers from some separation and rubbing at the top right-hand corners and spine tips, with some slight toning to the top edge also present.