Designing the Dust Jacket Cover Art for "The Spy Who Loved Me"

On April 16, 1962, The Spy Who Loved Me was published in London; it was 221 pages long and cost 15 shillings. As he had done with the previous 9 James Bond titles, Ian Fleming once again turned to artist Richard Chopping to design the dust jacket cover art for the book. Yet Fleming felt he was running short of ideas for the cover. 

He wrote to Chopping in June of 1961 saying: “…we are in rather of a quandary this time to suggest a suitable motif, and it occurred to me that you might have some brilliant idea for there are no emblems in the book which would in any way be suitable. The title of the book is The Spy Who Loved Me and so what suggests its-self of course is a juxtaposition between a dagger or a gun and an emblem representing love, rather on the lines of your gun with a rose. But what can we use now?” In the letter, Fleming goes on to suggest that they might use a “frilly heart shaped Valentines with a dagger thrust through it” as a possible cover.

In the end, however, Chopping and Fleming decided upon a simple knife and a flower motif. The flower chosen was a red carnation, rather than a rose, and the commando knife was actually borrowed from Fleming’s editor at Jonathan Cape, Michael Howard. In the final design, the knife pierces a partially burnt, hand written note that bears the title of the novel and pins it to the wooden background. 

A skilled illustrator, Chopping was able to find the balance between the book’s dueling themes of adventure and romance and design something that spoke to the story so well. 

We have a first edition printing of The Spy Who Loved Me, with its original dust jacket design. It is one of four James Bond titles currently available (all with their original dust jackets, as designed by Richard Chopping) in our Colorado shop. We also have first edition printings of Octopussy and the Living Daylights, You Only Live Twice, and The Man with the Golden Gun.