On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Bond hunts Blofeld and marries, then loses, Tracy.
The novel was published on 1 April 1963 in the UK by Jonathan Cape as a hardcover edition of 288 pages.[1] Within the sequence known as "the Blofeld trilogy", this novel is the middle entry, coming after Thunderball (1961) and before You Only Live Twice (1964).[2]
Quick Facts
- Author
- Ian Fleming
- Cover artist
- Richard Chopping
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Series
- James Bond
- Genre
- Spy fiction
- Publisher
- Jonathan Cape
- Released
- 1 April 1963
Facts from the source article.
Key facts and history
Fleming had published nine books in the preceding nine years by January 1962.[3] He wrote for about three hours in the morning and another hour between six and seven in the evening, following his usual practice.[4] The novel was published in America in August 1963 by the New American Library, at 299 pages.[5] The initial manuscript, which ran to 196 pages, bore the working title The Belles of Hell.[6]
On Her Majesty's Secret Service became the initial Fleming novel to appear on The New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained at number one for more than half a year.[5] As part of a sensitivity review conducted in 2023, Ian Fleming Publications arranged for the Bond series to be edited, with some racial or ethnic terms being removed or reworded.[7]
What the cited sources add
The novelist and critic Kingsley Amis found Bond a Byronic hero, seen as "lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique which has become in some way ravaged"[8] John Atkins, a writer, observed that by killing off Bond's newlywed wife, Fleming demonstrated a willingness to deviate from the typical formula of a popular author by forgoing a cheerful conclusion.[9] Jerry Palmer, an academic in communications, thought Fleming was employing a different thriller convention: that the protagonist ought to be solitary.[9]
References
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Benson 1988, p. 130 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Benson 1988, p. 130; Mills 2015, p. 110 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lycett 1996, p. 400 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Fleming 2009, p. 320; Pearson 1967, p. 398 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Benson 1988, p. 130; Lycett 1996, p. 400; Doolittle 1963, p. G7; Hines 2018, p. 37; Benson 1988, p. 130 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Benson 1988, p. 130; Chancellor 2005, p. 204; Lycett 1996, p. 400 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Simpson 2023; Mouriquand 2023 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mortimer 1963, p. 28; Mortimer 1963, p. 28; Amis 1966, p. 36 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Atkins 1984, p. 80 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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