James Bond : The 1960s Pan Covers and Raymond Hawkey
This stunning series of James Bond covers were the paperback presence of Ian Fleming’s character during the height of its fame in the 1960s and the Sean Connery films. There were millions of copies printed so that by the time I started collecting in the late 70s/early 80s, these were still the most-common editions to be found, even though other cover designs had succeeded them.
The previous paperback series had more typical painted illustration covers, but these simple, conceptual and iconic covers remain fantastic examples of design. They were the first series of Bond books to use modern typefaces (Helvetica and News Gothic in this case), and minimalistic imagery that included photographs. They would have stood out on a spinner rack that was still dominated by traditional imagery.
While I’ve listed the books below with the date of their first printings, the first cover designed was Thunderball, by Raymond Hawkey in 1963. The rest followed and were done by designers on staff at Pan.
007 Magazine did a great article on Mr. Hawkey in issue #54 (Feb 2011), available on their website.
Casino Royale (1953)
Live and Let Die (1954)
Moonraker (1955)
Diamonds are Forever (1956)
From Russia with Love (1957)
Dr. No (1958)
Goldfinger (1959)
For Your Eyes Only (1960)
Thunderball (1961)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963)
You Only Live Twice (1964)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1965)
Octopussy and the Living Daylights (1966)
What follows are the other Fleming-related Pan books of the 60s. Movie tie-in versions, Fleming’s non-Bond books and a couple of others. Presented in chronological order. Readers new to Bond may note that the books were filmed in a different order than they were written, and as the movies went on they used less and less of Fleming’s narrative.
The Diamond Smugglers (1960)
Dr. No (1962)
From Russia with Love (1963). Like Thunderball with its die-cut bullet holes, this edition has the film sprockets punched out.
Goldfinger (1964). Printed with gold metallic ink.
Thrilling Cities, Part One (1964)
Thrilling Cities, Part Two (1965)
Thunderball (1965)
The James Bond Dossier (1965) by Kingsley Amis. Analysis and commentary. Published at the height of Bondmania.
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Casino Royale (1967). The first film version was a rather bad send-up of all things Bond, but the DVD is worth picking up for the included black & white TV version from 1954 with Barry Nelson as Bond.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Colonel Sun (1970). Robert Markham was a nom de plume for Kingsley Amis, and this was the first post-Fleming Bond novel.
Diamonds are Forever (1971)
My Name’s Bond, James Bond (2000). An anthology of memorable excerpts from Fleming’s Bond books, organised by theme. Edited by Simon Winder for Allen Lane/The Penguin Press. A nice little hardcover volume that uses the Pan covers as design inspiration.
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Nice, I am gonna buy all the books, anyone know if they are translated to any language? Hopefully Swedish.
I don’t believe these versions were published in anything other than English, but Bond has been popular worldwide for decades. I’m sure there are Swedish editions of the books.
Where did you get the images from? I have at least one copy of each book but from different eras, some older than these some newer. I have the same covers as you show for: Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Man with the Golden Gun and Octupussy. I have never even seen some of these ones.
These are all books from my collection, though some of the images were found online some time ago because they were better looking copies than the ones I own.
Some went through a great number of printings with this version of the covers. Others less. For example, the Goldfinger cover shown here was hard for me to find, but the movie tie-in was pretty common. I’ve seen dozens of copies of Casino Royale and Dr. No.
Try eBay. They cycle through there pretty regularly.
I too have many of the books – before ebooks it was nigh on impossible to find the books and special ordering them was way too expensive. Some of the covers I’ve seen before – some are new.
Thanks
My pleasure.
Hi. Are any of these copies if first editions worth money?
Hi Laurence –
You could visit eBay to check what copies go for. As they were mass-market paperbacks printed in large numbers when Bond was the most popular, I haven’t seen higher prices unless the copy was in near-mint condition.
Nice stuff! I was wondering why some of the Raymond Hawkey covers have the price (3/6) on the cover, and others don’t? Different print editions (19 through 24) or printed for distribution in other countries…? LMK Cheers. Tim.
Hi Tim –
Most of the older Pans have 3’6 (3 shillings 6 pence) on them. As the 60s progressed, yes, they did split cover runs for the international markets, listing countries in the Commonwealth. The 60¢ covers refer specifically to Australian pricing. After the decimalisation of the pound in February 1971, UK prices were listed in pence. Colonel Sun, for example, was listed at 30p UK, $1 Australia & New Zealand, and $1.25 Canada.
Thanks for the kind words and the question.
– Scott
Hi, am trying to get the For Your Eyes Only Hawkey cover (the one with the rubber stamp on the front) and have been on eBay but they are not very good copies – any other ideas please?
Thanks
Chris
You might try the CommanderBond.net forums. Other than that, eBay can be a waiting game.
Just a comment. These are the editions of James Bond that were in my house as a boy in the 1960s. My parents were both big Bond fans… which of course spilled over onto me. We had the 1963 Pan editions of Goldfinger, Thunderball, Dr. No, Moonraker, You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun. Then the film edition of From Russia with Love.
My teacher had words with my Mum when she noticed that I was reading Goldfinger at recess (I was in grade 4 at the time), complaining that it was not appropriate literature for a 9-year-old boy to be reading.
Mum told her, “We love Bond in our house… bugger off.”
I think the rarest variants of the Pan editions are the white cover editions from the late 60s-early 70s featuring images of women posing in various milieus related to the book. Sadly I don’t believe they issued one for every Fleming book as I’ve been trying to collect the whole set. They’re recognizable by using the same title fonts on the spines as the still life series shown here, but with white spines. Pan also did a beautiful pulp art series prior to the still lifes, though of course Fleming hadn’t written all the books by then so they only go up to I think For Your Eyes Only. And in the 1970s Pan did another set of still lifes covers featuring props related to the stories, though I preferred the iconic girls and guns cover series that Panther published around the same time.
The classic Hawkey covers are fairly easy to find on eBay and, in my opinion, rank alongside the original first edition painting design and the 2008 Centenary Edition as the best covers ever.