Why was 'TPOAL' (1963) omitted from Octopussy and TLD (1966) 1st ed.?
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,844MI6 Agent
This is a question that comes into my mind every now and then and now seems as good a time as any to make a thread about it as I'm writing a little something on Ian Fleming's Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966) Jonathan Cape first edition short story collection. I'm not really sure of the answer to this question, either, so I think a new thread is the only way forward. 
Basically, I'm wondering why Glidrose (now IFP, the literary copyright holders of the literary James Bond) chose to omit the third short story 'The Property of A Lady' (1963) from the two short stories already collected in Octopussy and The Living Daylights. It is a case of three Bond stories selling better than two surely? They could have just titled the three story collection Octopussy as the 1967 Pan paperback edition which finally included 'The Property of A Lady' was of course titled. The Wikipedia page on the short story collection has the following introduction which neatly explains where all of the short stories were published or adapted initially before inclusion in the expanded Octopussy short story collection by various publishers between 1967 and the inclusion of '007 in New York' in 2002:
Octopussy and The Living Daylights (sometimes published as Octopussy) is the fourteenth and final James Bond book written by Ian Fleming in the Bond series. The book is a collection of short stories published posthumously in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on 23 June 1966.
The book originally contained just two stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", with subsequent editions also carrying firstly "The Property of a Lady" and then "007 in New York". The stories were first published in different publications, with "Octopussy" first serialised in the Daily Express in October 1965. "The Living Daylights" had first appeared in The Sunday Times on 4 February 1962; "The Property of a Lady" was published in November 1963 in a Sotheby's publication, The Ivory Hammer, whilst "007 in New York" first appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1963.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy_and_The_Living_Daylights
From this excerpt we can see that 'The Property of A Lady' was initially commissioned by Sotheby's and published in their The Ivory Hammer in 1963. The first edition hardback of Octopussy and The Living Daylights was not published until 23 June 1966 in the UK. That's a good three years but for some reason Glidrose decided to not include 'The Property of A Lady' in the first edition but to presumably save it (for whatever reason) for the inevitable Pan paperback edition which quickly followed the next year, in 1967.
I do recall that the original 1967 Pan paperback edition (just called Octopussy due to the extra short story inside the covers) had on the back in bold lettering 'The first time in paperback, this BOND BONUS from PAN - 'The Property of A Lady', or words to that effect. Perhaps this is the main clue as to why it wasn't included in the Jonathan Cape hardback first edition; Glidrose decided to keep it back to have something new for the cheaper Pan paperback edition the following year as they this would be the very last of original Fleming Bond in book form.
Another possible idea for why 'The Property of A Lady' was not included in the Cape first edition may have been to do with literary rights as Sotheby's commissioned the short story for The Ivory Hammer in 1963 and so perhaps they had an exclusivity deal with Fleming and Glidrose that it wouldn't be published elsewhere for "X" amount of time.
Yet another thought which comes to me just now is that Fleming famously refused payment from Sotheby's for 'The Property of A Lady' as he felt it was not up to his usual standard. That was a very honorable thing to do, and it could be another reason why Glidrose (perhaps at the behest of Peter Fleming?) chose not to include the story in the first edition at the very least. Could be.
So, those are my thoughts on Glidrose's reasoning for not including 'The Property of A Lady' in the Octopussy and The Living Daylights collection and waiting until the Pan paperback edition some four years later to publish it in book form. Perhaps someone out there knows more about this, or can give their views on this matter which I find rather fascinating. -{
Basically, I'm wondering why Glidrose (now IFP, the literary copyright holders of the literary James Bond) chose to omit the third short story 'The Property of A Lady' (1963) from the two short stories already collected in Octopussy and The Living Daylights. It is a case of three Bond stories selling better than two surely? They could have just titled the three story collection Octopussy as the 1967 Pan paperback edition which finally included 'The Property of A Lady' was of course titled. The Wikipedia page on the short story collection has the following introduction which neatly explains where all of the short stories were published or adapted initially before inclusion in the expanded Octopussy short story collection by various publishers between 1967 and the inclusion of '007 in New York' in 2002:
Octopussy and The Living Daylights (sometimes published as Octopussy) is the fourteenth and final James Bond book written by Ian Fleming in the Bond series. The book is a collection of short stories published posthumously in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on 23 June 1966.
The book originally contained just two stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", with subsequent editions also carrying firstly "The Property of a Lady" and then "007 in New York". The stories were first published in different publications, with "Octopussy" first serialised in the Daily Express in October 1965. "The Living Daylights" had first appeared in The Sunday Times on 4 February 1962; "The Property of a Lady" was published in November 1963 in a Sotheby's publication, The Ivory Hammer, whilst "007 in New York" first appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1963.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy_and_The_Living_Daylights
From this excerpt we can see that 'The Property of A Lady' was initially commissioned by Sotheby's and published in their The Ivory Hammer in 1963. The first edition hardback of Octopussy and The Living Daylights was not published until 23 June 1966 in the UK. That's a good three years but for some reason Glidrose decided to not include 'The Property of A Lady' in the first edition but to presumably save it (for whatever reason) for the inevitable Pan paperback edition which quickly followed the next year, in 1967.
I do recall that the original 1967 Pan paperback edition (just called Octopussy due to the extra short story inside the covers) had on the back in bold lettering 'The first time in paperback, this BOND BONUS from PAN - 'The Property of A Lady', or words to that effect. Perhaps this is the main clue as to why it wasn't included in the Jonathan Cape hardback first edition; Glidrose decided to keep it back to have something new for the cheaper Pan paperback edition the following year as they this would be the very last of original Fleming Bond in book form.
Another possible idea for why 'The Property of A Lady' was not included in the Cape first edition may have been to do with literary rights as Sotheby's commissioned the short story for The Ivory Hammer in 1963 and so perhaps they had an exclusivity deal with Fleming and Glidrose that it wouldn't be published elsewhere for "X" amount of time.
Yet another thought which comes to me just now is that Fleming famously refused payment from Sotheby's for 'The Property of A Lady' as he felt it was not up to his usual standard. That was a very honorable thing to do, and it could be another reason why Glidrose (perhaps at the behest of Peter Fleming?) chose not to include the story in the first edition at the very least. Could be.
So, those are my thoughts on Glidrose's reasoning for not including 'The Property of A Lady' in the Octopussy and The Living Daylights collection and waiting until the Pan paperback edition some four years later to publish it in book form. Perhaps someone out there knows more about this, or can give their views on this matter which I find rather fascinating.
-{ "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
It'd be nice to think they respected Fleming's feeling about Property of a Lady not being good enough, but...
As far as I know Fleming had no plans to publish Octopussy itself (we were discussing this in Barbel's Canon thread, maybe you know if there was proof Fleming did intend for it to be published?)
And he gave explicit instructions The Spy Who Loved Me was not to be reprinted, and there was to be no paperback, yet two years later PAN still put out a paperback …
More possible they just figured PoaL just wasn't good enough, whereas Octopussy is definitely a better bit of writing even if Bond is just a walk-on character?
I see a more cynical explanation: following Fleming's death and the success of the Goldfinger film, I think they were milking whatever leftover Fleming there was for all it was worth:
-the PAN paperback edition of Thrilling Cities was two volumes
-the hardcover of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang was three volumes
-the publishers worried the Man with the Golden Gun was either unfinished or just not very good yet they published right on schedule anyway
-they published two Bond related books by Kingsley Amis and Pearson's Fleming biography (I think these three were official products)
They were competing with unofficial Bond products like O.F. Snelling's Double O Seven book, The Man With The Golden Pen, For Bond Lovers Only, and Harvard Lampoon's Alligator parody, as well as dozens of competing spy novels and spyfilm tie-ins not even about James Bond but kinda sorta the same thing ... at the height of spy mania I'm sure they marketed whatever they had left as shrewdly as they could.
Like, to be fair to customers, since tMwtGG wasn't very good, and kinda short, why not just add the Living Daylights to that, and folks'd sorta get their money's worth? Instead, they save tLD for another year, and package it with a previously unknown story found in Fleming's desk drawer. So Bond completists already need to buy two books.
Then a year later the paperback version adds one more story, so everybody who'd bought the hardcover needs to by the paperback too! Glidrose, Cape, and PAN all stand to gain by such a scheme!
Then they publish the PAN tSwLM despite Fleming's instructons, then Colonel Sun, then there's not much new product for years to come... all this glut of product peaked and fell with the mid60s Bondmania craze.
So yeh, I'd guess shrewd cynical marketing when the market was at its peak and Fleming himself was no longer there to fulfill it.
Yup. Totally agree with your assessment- they were milking the cash cow as long as they could.
I suspect this is likely.