'Double O Seven, James Bond, A Report' (1964), by O. F. (Oswald Frederick) Snelling, is the first book-length, critical analysis of the James Bond novels, and the only such study Ian Fleming approved. It was published in August 1964, the month when Fleming died, a coincidence that earned the book’s first edition a wide readership.

A lifelong devotee of British thriller writers, Snelling was a professional antiquarian working in the Hodgson auction house, where he met Ian Fleming, who had gone there to do research. In the course of writing James Bond, A Report, he learned that novelist Kingsley Amis also was writing a like study, so, Snelling worked quickly to ensure that his book would be published first. He succeeded; Amis’s scholarly, literary, critical study, The James Bond Dossier (1965), was published in late 1965. Since then, the books are compared; some aficionados consider Snelling’s book the superior contribution to the field of critical literary studies of James Bond.

In Britain, Panther Books reprinted 'Double O Seven, James Bond, A Report' in paperback; it was translated to and published in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Hebrew editions. In the U.S., the New American Library, Fleming’s North American publishers, issued it in 1965.

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