Per Fine Ounce
Encyclopedia
Per Fine Ounce is the title of an unpublished novel by Geoffrey Jenkins
featuring Ian Fleming
's James Bond
. It was completed circa 1966 and is considered a "lost" novel by fans of James Bond because it was actually commissioned by Glidrose Productions
, the official publishers of James Bond. It was rejected for publication, however, missing the opportunity to become the first continuation James Bond novel. 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior
, a novel written under the pseudonym
R. D. Mascott was later published in 1967 featuring the nephew of James Bond and Colonel Sun
written by Kingsley Amis
under the pseudonym Robert Markham
was published in 1968 as the first adult continuation novel following Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun
(1965).
in 1965 when he was researching his biography on Ian Fleming, The Life of Ian Fleming
, Jenkins revealed that in the late 50s he had discussed the idea of a James Bond novel set in South Africa
with Fleming, and even written a synopsis of it, which Fleming had very much liked. Fleming had said he would come to South Africa to research the book, but he died before this happened. Pearson was understandably excited by this revelation, and even more so when he found Jenkins' Bond synopsis in Fleming's papers.
At the same time, Glidrose were considering the idea of asking other authors to continue writing James Bond novels, a notion that Fleming's wife, Ann, was against, but his brother, Peter Fleming, who at the time was Glidrose's director, favoured. In November 1965, Jenkins met with Harry Saltzman
, co-producer of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1974, and Charles Tyrell from Glidrose to discuss the possibility of his making his South African synopsis into the first James Bond 'continuation' novel. Negotiations were protracted, but Jenkins was formally granted permission to write the book on May 12, 1966; a contract was drawn up on August 24, 1966, which stated that Jenkins would be entitled to a percentage of profits in any film made from the novel, but not from any related merchandise that might come about.
Not much is known of the plot for Per Fine Ounce. The reference work The Bond Files by Andy Lane
and Paul Simpson indicates that it was based upon a story Jenkins claimed he and Fleming had worked on around 1957, and that the storyline was set in South Africa
and dealt with diamond smugglers and a spy ring and bore some resemblance to Fleming's Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever
as well as his non-Bond work, The Diamond Smugglers
. However, in an interview with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang magazine published in 2005, Peter Janson-Smith, Fleming's former literary agent and former chairman of Glidrose, claimed that he believed the story may have been about gold
. This makes more sense, as the title derives from the line "per fine Troy ounce" or a variation of. A fine ounce is a Troy ounce
of not quite pure gold. Jenkins' synopsis found by John Pearson in Fleming's papers featured gold bicycle chains, baobab tree coffins and the magical Lake Fundudzi - presumably, Jenkins used some or all of these elements in the book itself. Four draft pages of the manuscript were discovered in 2005, in which we learn that the Double-O Section has been closed down and James Bond defies M on a matter of principle, resigning from MI6 to pursue his mission in South Africa alone.
Despite such promising-sounding material, and the fact that Jenkins was a best-selling thriller writer in the Fleming mould, had been a friend and colleague of Fleming's and had apparently had his blessing and input for the project, Glidrose rejected Jenkins' submitted manuscript. Peter Janson-Smith later recalled that he thought it was badly written, although he admitted that Glidrose may have been "stricter in those days."
A copy of the manuscript is rumoured to exist in the archives of Ian Fleming Publications
(renamed from Glidrose in 1998) - however, Peter Janson-Smith has said that he doesn't believe Ian Fleming Publications still holds a copy and that the most likely scenario is that the manuscript was returned for legal reasons (so as to not be sued in the future for plagiarism if a book with a similar plot is used). Jenkins' contract with Glidrose gave him a licence to re-use the material in the novel in the event of its rejection, with the proviso that he could not use any of Fleming's characters. Jenkins may have done this: his 1973 novel A Cleft Of Stars, while not containing any rogue British secret agents, is set in almost precisely the same area of South Africa, involves diamonds and gold, and the hero temporarily hides himself in a baobab tree.
In 2005, Titan Books
published a reprint of a comic strip
based upon Colonel Sun. In the introduction, it is stated that in the mid-1970s Amis lobbied for Eon Productions
(producers of the Bond film franchise) to produce a film based upon his book. Reportedly he was told that Saltzman had forbidden that any film be made based on Colonel Sun due to Glidrose refusing to publish Per Fine Ounce a decade earlier.
In 2010, previously unreleased extracts from the "lost" Jenkins manuscript Per Fine Ounce were released exclusively on James Bond website MI6
. The extract reveals 007's traditional briefing with "M".
Geoffrey Jenkins
-Early life:Jenkins was born Pretoria. At the age of 17 he wrote and had published A Century of History which received a special eulogy from General Jan Smuts at the centenary of Potchefstroom....
featuring Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
. It was completed circa 1966 and is considered a "lost" novel by fans of James Bond because it was actually commissioned by Glidrose Productions
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...
, the official publishers of James Bond. It was rejected for publication, however, missing the opportunity to become the first continuation James Bond novel. 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior
003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior
003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior is a 1967 James Bond spin-off novel carrying the Glidrose Productions copyright. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Jonathan Cape publishing company in 1967 and later in 1968 in the United States by Random House. The novel was written under...
, a novel written under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
R. D. Mascott was later published in 1967 featuring the nephew of James Bond and 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...
written 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...
under the pseudonym 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...
was published in 1968 as the first adult continuation novel following Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun
The Man with the Golden Gun (novel)
The Man with the Golden Gun is the twelfth novel of Ian Fleming's James Bond series of books. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK on 1 April 1965, eight months after the author's death. The novel was not as detailed or polished as the others in the series, leading to poor but polite...
(1965).
History
Geoffrey Jenkins was given a job in the Foreign Department of Kemsley Newspapers, an organisation owned by the London Sunday Times, by Viscount Kemsley. There he worked with Ian Fleming, who was the Foreign Manager of the department, and the two men became friends. In a letter to John PearsonJohn 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....
in 1965 when he was researching his biography on Ian Fleming, 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...
, Jenkins revealed that in the late 50s he had discussed the idea of a James Bond novel set in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
with Fleming, and even written a synopsis of it, which Fleming had very much liked. Fleming had said he would come to South Africa to research the book, but he died before this happened. Pearson was understandably excited by this revelation, and even more so when he found Jenkins' Bond synopsis in Fleming's papers.
At the same time, Glidrose were considering the idea of asking other authors to continue writing James Bond novels, a notion that Fleming's wife, Ann, was against, but his brother, Peter Fleming, who at the time was Glidrose's director, favoured. In November 1965, Jenkins met with Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R...
, co-producer of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1974, and Charles Tyrell from Glidrose to discuss the possibility of his making his South African synopsis into the first James Bond 'continuation' novel. Negotiations were protracted, but Jenkins was formally granted permission to write the book on May 12, 1966; a contract was drawn up on August 24, 1966, which stated that Jenkins would be entitled to a percentage of profits in any film made from the novel, but not from any related merchandise that might come about.
Not much is known of the plot for Per Fine Ounce. The reference work The Bond Files by Andy Lane
Andy Lane
Andrew Lane , who also writes as Andy Lane, is a British author and journalist. He has written a number of spin-off novels in the Virgin New Adventures range and audio dramas for Big Finish based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who , as well as assorted non fiction books based...
and Paul Simpson indicates that it was based upon a story Jenkins claimed he and Fleming had worked on around 1957, and that the storyline was set in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and dealt with diamond smugglers and a spy ring and bore some resemblance to Fleming's Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever
Diamonds Are Forever (novel)
Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth of Ian Fleming's James Bond series of novels. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK on 26 March 1956 and the first print run of 12,500 copies sold out quickly...
as well as his non-Bond work, The Diamond Smugglers
The Diamond Smugglers
The Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction work by Ian Fleming that was first published in 1957 in the United Kingdom and in 1958 in the United States....
. However, in an interview with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang magazine published in 2005, Peter Janson-Smith, Fleming's former literary agent and former chairman of Glidrose, claimed that he believed the story may have been about gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
. This makes more sense, as the title derives from the line "per fine Troy ounce" or a variation of. A fine ounce is a Troy ounce
Troy ounce
The troy ounce is a unit of imperial measure. In the present day it is most commonly used to gauge the weight of precious metals. One troy ounce is nowadays defined as exactly 0.0311034768 kg = 31.1034768 g. There are approximately 32.1507466 troy oz in 1 kg...
of not quite pure gold. Jenkins' synopsis found by John Pearson in Fleming's papers featured gold bicycle chains, baobab tree coffins and the magical Lake Fundudzi - presumably, Jenkins used some or all of these elements in the book itself. Four draft pages of the manuscript were discovered in 2005, in which we learn that the Double-O Section has been closed down and James Bond defies M on a matter of principle, resigning from MI6 to pursue his mission in South Africa alone.
Despite such promising-sounding material, and the fact that Jenkins was a best-selling thriller writer in the Fleming mould, had been a friend and colleague of Fleming's and had apparently had his blessing and input for the project, Glidrose rejected Jenkins' submitted manuscript. Peter Janson-Smith later recalled that he thought it was badly written, although he admitted that Glidrose may have been "stricter in those days."
A copy of the manuscript is rumoured to exist in the archives of Ian Fleming 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...
(renamed from Glidrose in 1998) - however, Peter Janson-Smith has said that he doesn't believe Ian Fleming Publications still holds a copy and that the most likely scenario is that the manuscript was returned for legal reasons (so as to not be sued in the future for plagiarism if a book with a similar plot is used). Jenkins' contract with Glidrose gave him a licence to re-use the material in the novel in the event of its rejection, with the proviso that he could not use any of Fleming's characters. Jenkins may have done this: his 1973 novel A Cleft Of Stars, while not containing any rogue British secret agents, is set in almost precisely the same area of South Africa, involves diamonds and gold, and the hero temporarily hides himself in a baobab tree.
In 2005, Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
published a reprint of a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
based upon Colonel Sun. In the introduction, it is stated that in the mid-1970s Amis lobbied for Eon Productions
EON Productions
Eon Productions is a film production company known for producing the James Bond film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom...
(producers of the Bond film franchise) to produce a film based upon his book. Reportedly he was told that Saltzman had forbidden that any film be made based on Colonel Sun due to Glidrose refusing to publish Per Fine Ounce a decade earlier.
In 2010, previously unreleased extracts from the "lost" Jenkins manuscript Per Fine Ounce were released exclusively on James Bond website MI6
MI6.co.uk
MI6-HQ.com is a media-website dedicated to the people, places and world of James Bond, providing daily updates on the subject.- About :MI6-HQ.com publishes original, in-depth articles and intercepts a comprehensive collection of news headlines involving all aspects of the world of James Bond,...
. The extract reveals 007's traditional briefing with "M".
See also
- James BondJames BondJames Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
- Robert MarkhamRobert MarkhamRobert 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...
- Diamonds Are ForeverDiamonds Are Forever (novel)Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth of Ian Fleming's James Bond series of novels. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK on 26 March 1956 and the first print run of 12,500 copies sold out quickly...
- The Diamond SmugglersThe Diamond SmugglersThe Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction work by Ian Fleming that was first published in 1957 in the United Kingdom and in 1958 in the United States....
Sources
- Duns, Jeremy. "Gold Dust", Kiss Kiss Bang Bang magazine, Issue 2 (Winter 2005), pp. 39–47
- Lane, Andy and Paul Simpson. The Bond Files: An Unofficial Guide to the World's Greatest Secret Agent revised edition. London: Virgin BooksVirgin BooksVirgin Books is a United Kingdom book publisher 90% owned by the publishing group Random House, and 10% owned by Virgin Enterprises, the company originally set up by Richard Branson as a record company.-History:...
, 2000; p. 433. - Page, James. "The Genesis of Colonel Sun" in James Bond 007: Colonel Sun. London: Titan Books, 2005; np.