The Reasoning Behind the Robert Markham Pseudonym for Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun (1968)?
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,844MI6 Agent
As literary James Bond fans we're all aware of the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym for Kingsley Amis's sole Bond novel Colonel Sun (1968). It was the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964. As such, there was reportedly a plan by Glidrose, then the literary copyright holders in the James Bond property, to have several famous authors each write a separate Bond novel of their own under the same pseudonym. After the suggested name of George Glidrose was rejected as unmarketable by the Glidrose board they settled on Robert Markham instead as a more suitable pseudonym.
As we know, Amis's Colonel Sun was ultimately the only Bond novel produced under the pseudonym and the plan to have other authors write under that name also was presumably scrapped altogether. It's been said that disappointing sales and adverse critical notices served to put an end to any plans of continuing with the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym. The literary Bond was not to return properly until 1981 and the publication of John Gardner's Licence Renewed.
The purpose of this thread is to further explore the reasoning behind the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym. I've been reading up on all of the available primary and secondary sources that exist on this very early piece of Bond continuation history and the reasoning seems at best self-contradictory. For example, how can we square the circle of the Robert Markham pseudonym being used on the cover of Colonel Sun first and paperback editions while at the same time letting it be known that Kingsley Amis was the actual author in marketing materials and even on the cover of US paperbacks of the novel? Why not just market the novel as solely by Kingsley Amis from the start. Amis was one of the biggest names in British post-war literature so why not trade off his very famous name instead of diluting things down by adding the confusion of the Markham pseudonym into the mix?
From interviews with Amis we know that there were at least two reasons for the use of the pseudonym. One was being able to market the books more easily as part of an ongoing series with several authors sharing the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym. (I actually dispute how this would have made marketing the books any easier but as the umbrella pseudonym idea never came to pass I suppose it's more of a moot point).
The other reason given was that it would easily separate Colonel Sun from Amis's own more serious fiction. Amis already had form in this area as his non-fiction The Book of Bond or Every Man His Own 007 (1965) had been written under the Bill Tanner pseudonym. Of course The James Bond Dossier had earlier appeared under his own name. The use of 'Robert Markham' would in effect be the pseudonym equivalent of author Graham Greene using the "An Entertainment" tag to separate his thrillers from his more serious literary novels. This second reason was perhaps the real driving force behind the use of the Markham pseudonym in the first place and was of course completely Amis-centric. It was also not necessarily something other authors would have demanded or even politely requested as part of their contract when writing the new Bond novel.
Despite not being so well known a reason among literary Bond fans it also suggests that had Amis not first been approached a pseudonym might never have been used at all. For example, if James Leasor had accepted the offer to write a Bond novel before Amis it's much more likely he'd have written under his own name (as a notable thriller writer of the time) than under Glidrose's umbrella pseudonym. In other words, it appears to me that the umbrella pseudonym rumour may well have been peddled by Amis and possibly Glidrose as cover for Amis's early foray into genre fiction and away from his own more serious work. The pseudonym therefore acted as a sort of dividing line in Amis's fiction. This is further backed up by the fact that the novel's original full title was (one imagines for the avoidance of doubt from the Amis reader) Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure. Perhaps complicating matters, however, is the fact that Amis continued to write genre fiction under his own name in some of the novels that followed Colonel Sun.
With all of the aforementioned in mind, some questions jump out at me from my reading of the various primary and secondary sources available:
1. What was the true reasoning behind the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym for Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun?
2. Did the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym actually hurt the sales for the novel as well as damage the book critically in reviews? It also opened up a weak area for Ann Fleming to be able to exploit in her unpublished polemical Sunday Telegraph review of the novel, not ultimately printed for fear of libel.
3. Was the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym just a rumoured idea from Glidrose or was it a true part of their plan for marketing a series of continuation Bond novels under different authors? Or was the umbrella pseudonym just a smoke screen devised by Glidrose and Amis as cover for him to "have his cake and eat it" thus setting Colonel Sun apart from his more serious literary work? Or did the pseudonym in fact serve to kill the two birds with the one stone?
4. As a side question does anyone here know the exact makeup of the Glidrose board at the time of Colonel Sun? I know Peter Fleming was on the board, along with Jock Campbell (later Lord Campbell) and I think Lord Goodman. I think Ian Fleming's agent Peter Janson-Smith was also a member, or at least he certainly was later on. Ann Fleming was made an honorary member of the board at the insistence of Peter Fleming.
Any help in providing your thoughts on these specific questions or on anything else that occurs to you on this topic would be greatly appreciated!
As we know, Amis's Colonel Sun was ultimately the only Bond novel produced under the pseudonym and the plan to have other authors write under that name also was presumably scrapped altogether. It's been said that disappointing sales and adverse critical notices served to put an end to any plans of continuing with the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym. The literary Bond was not to return properly until 1981 and the publication of John Gardner's Licence Renewed.
The purpose of this thread is to further explore the reasoning behind the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym. I've been reading up on all of the available primary and secondary sources that exist on this very early piece of Bond continuation history and the reasoning seems at best self-contradictory. For example, how can we square the circle of the Robert Markham pseudonym being used on the cover of Colonel Sun first and paperback editions while at the same time letting it be known that Kingsley Amis was the actual author in marketing materials and even on the cover of US paperbacks of the novel? Why not just market the novel as solely by Kingsley Amis from the start. Amis was one of the biggest names in British post-war literature so why not trade off his very famous name instead of diluting things down by adding the confusion of the Markham pseudonym into the mix?
From interviews with Amis we know that there were at least two reasons for the use of the pseudonym. One was being able to market the books more easily as part of an ongoing series with several authors sharing the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym. (I actually dispute how this would have made marketing the books any easier but as the umbrella pseudonym idea never came to pass I suppose it's more of a moot point).
The other reason given was that it would easily separate Colonel Sun from Amis's own more serious fiction. Amis already had form in this area as his non-fiction The Book of Bond or Every Man His Own 007 (1965) had been written under the Bill Tanner pseudonym. Of course The James Bond Dossier had earlier appeared under his own name. The use of 'Robert Markham' would in effect be the pseudonym equivalent of author Graham Greene using the "An Entertainment" tag to separate his thrillers from his more serious literary novels. This second reason was perhaps the real driving force behind the use of the Markham pseudonym in the first place and was of course completely Amis-centric. It was also not necessarily something other authors would have demanded or even politely requested as part of their contract when writing the new Bond novel.
Despite not being so well known a reason among literary Bond fans it also suggests that had Amis not first been approached a pseudonym might never have been used at all. For example, if James Leasor had accepted the offer to write a Bond novel before Amis it's much more likely he'd have written under his own name (as a notable thriller writer of the time) than under Glidrose's umbrella pseudonym. In other words, it appears to me that the umbrella pseudonym rumour may well have been peddled by Amis and possibly Glidrose as cover for Amis's early foray into genre fiction and away from his own more serious work. The pseudonym therefore acted as a sort of dividing line in Amis's fiction. This is further backed up by the fact that the novel's original full title was (one imagines for the avoidance of doubt from the Amis reader) Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure. Perhaps complicating matters, however, is the fact that Amis continued to write genre fiction under his own name in some of the novels that followed Colonel Sun.
With all of the aforementioned in mind, some questions jump out at me from my reading of the various primary and secondary sources available:
1. What was the true reasoning behind the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym for Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun?
2. Did the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym actually hurt the sales for the novel as well as damage the book critically in reviews? It also opened up a weak area for Ann Fleming to be able to exploit in her unpublished polemical Sunday Telegraph review of the novel, not ultimately printed for fear of libel.
3. Was the Robert Markham umbrella pseudonym just a rumoured idea from Glidrose or was it a true part of their plan for marketing a series of continuation Bond novels under different authors? Or was the umbrella pseudonym just a smoke screen devised by Glidrose and Amis as cover for him to "have his cake and eat it" thus setting Colonel Sun apart from his more serious literary work? Or did the pseudonym in fact serve to kill the two birds with the one stone?
4. As a side question does anyone here know the exact makeup of the Glidrose board at the time of Colonel Sun? I know Peter Fleming was on the board, along with Jock Campbell (later Lord Campbell) and I think Lord Goodman. I think Ian Fleming's agent Peter Janson-Smith was also a member, or at least he certainly was later on. Ann Fleming was made an honorary member of the board at the insistence of Peter Fleming.
Any help in providing your thoughts on these specific questions or on anything else that occurs to you on this topic would be greatly appreciated!
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
So other writers could all use the same name, as that's been done before. My own guess would be
That Kingsley Ami's was already a very famous author so didn't want the humiliation if it hadn't been
A success ? Also he was a bit more left wing politically from Fleming, so he may have thought he'd
Have gotten some harsher reviews because of that from the right wing press ?
I'm sure you'll get to the... bottom of it, SM.
More seriously, I've nothing to add to what's been said above. I've read, presumably, the same sources over the years and would only repeat the same comments.
I believe it was the roaring success of Christopher Wood’s adaptions of TSWLM and MR which spurred the John Gardner continuation novels. It’s a pity really, because I would have loved to have read further adaptions of the movies by Wood, I thought his writing mirrored Fleming’s more than any other author.
Incidentally, as a bookseller of 40 years before retirement, Colonel Sun was probably the lowest seller of any Bond novel in my shop.
Would that have had anything to do with the fact that the novel was out of print for decades?
It was years before I even knew the book existed and I’d gone round many franchised bookshops and various ‘independent’ ones too - they’d either never heard of it or couldn’t get a copy
In the end I had to ‘hire’ a specialist to source a copy for me
It was worth the wait as, in my opinion, it’s the best non-Fleming Bond novel -{
Anyway - apologies at derailing the this excellent thread...as Barbel says, I’ve probably read all the same articles as yourself.
Best selling Bond for me were the movie cover versions of the books, they were always popular. Bond sales died down throughout the 90,s and only really picked up again when CR was released.
Going back on topic I never got my hands on a hardcover 1st edition of Colonel Sun, but had all the Fleming ones at various stages.
Read loads of those, when looking for
Bond books !
Some of the covers were really good, too.
The text on the front cover of Trigger Mortis for example is a bit misleading.
But maybe in 1968, Flemings death was so recent and much publicized they couldnt do that, so had to make up new name?
Christopher Wood's The Spy Who Loved Me on the other hand just had his name even smaller than the books serial number.
Amis, Amis and Bond (BBC Radio 4, originally broadcast 17 July 2007). Featuring Charlie Higson interviewing the late Martin Amis, son of Sir Kingsley.
I remember hearing this at the time (and taping it) but it's good to see it finally uploaded on YouTube by MI6-HQ:
Despite not being so well known a reason among literary Bond fans it also suggests that had Amis not first been approached a pseudonym might never have been used at all.
I think it was the other way around: Glidrose conceived of having future Bond novels written by journeyman authors and maybe even a couple hacks, and all would be credited to "Robert Markham," in the time honored tradition of umbrella pseudonyms like "Ellery Queen." Divorcing the authors from their names would increase Glidrose's control over the books and make it easier to impose uniformity.
But then someone thought of having Amis write the first continuation novel, which created a problem. From a marketing standpoint, it would have been stupid to hide his authorship. But if Glidrose intended to publish future volumes written by other, much less prestigious authors, than retaining "Robert Markham" also made some sense: Establish Markham now, so the second book can be entirely credited to him. Glidrose therefore tried to do both, this probably hurt sales, and so there was no second book.
Yes, you are of course quite right, @Revelator. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I wrote that over 3 years ago now other than it was quite late at night and my brain may have been tired trying to unravel the reasoning behind the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym! That and the increased stress and busyness at work due to the then raging Covid-19 pandemic. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. 😉
In hindsight I think it was quite foolish on the part of Glidrose to merge the idea of a great post-war author and Bond fan like Kingsley Amis writing a Bond novel with their separate idea to have various lesser writers all write under the same umbrella pseudonym of "Robert Markham". It would've been better postponing the umbrella pseudonym idea until after Amis had published his Bond novel or possibly novels, depending on how good the sales were. Combining both ideas together no doubt hurt sales as a name like Robert Markham really means nothing to the general reader. At least partially obscuring a talent like Kingsley Amis is a rather foolhardy thing to do from a sales and even a critical perspective where critics could (and did) say that Amis was trying to hide his involvement in writing a Bond novel, which wasn't true at all of course. Still, the perception stuck and I'm sure many people weren't even aware, at the face value of the cover, that Kingsley Amis was the true author. I have to say that I'm not even sure if the umbrella pseudonym was all that great an idea either. Spy author names like for instance James Leasor, John Gardner, Len Deighton, Adam Hall or James Mayo would surely have more selling power on their own bat than under a pseudonym. That is unless I've misunderstood things and Glidrose intended to employ various hacks, journalists or very obscure writers who weren't household names or well known to the public?
Yes, Glidrose made the wrong choice in trying to retain Markham and Amis. The obvious marketing move would have been to promote Amis as a Bond author. Obscuring that with a pseudonym did the opposite.
My guess is that Glidrose did indeed intend to "employ various hacks, journalists or very obscure writers who weren't household names or well known to the public." The notion of having continuation novels written by high profile authors was less common and less accepted in the late 60s. Occasionally you'd get someone like John Dickson Carr writing Sherlock Holmes stories, but Doyle was a far more prestigious author than Fleming.
Amis was game for the task because he was a big fan of the Bond books. But even if other well-regarded novelists were also Fleming fans, would they have wanted to take time out from their own work to write about someone else's character? Perhaps if the money was good--I could see Simon Raven or Anthony Burgess being interested.
But Glidrose was likely aiming to attract the sort of authors who were cranking out the later Saint novels and and Nick Carter-Killmaster books. They would have been easier to control and less expensive.
Incidentally, has anyone given a definite answer as to why no further Bond continuation novels were published in the 60s and 70s? I've heard Colonel Sun had disappointing sales but I've also heard Ann Fleming put her foot down. That might explain why only non-continuation Bond books were published in the 70s, and why Gardner didn't write his continuations until after Ann's death. But did Ann actually have the power to prevent post-Amis continuations from being published, or were there other factors involved?
I suppose it's worth mentioning that James Bond was such a big name in the 60s it trumped everything else, even any big name author. Like how the naff movie Casino Royale even made a profit - it was the name James Bond attached to it.
And maybe a celebrates author like - or rather talented author like Amis - was meant to give the new novels a fresh start, or head start with some decent writing. It might sort of mislead readers a bit into thinking, okay, the last one was Robert Markham and this is under the same umbrella.
Chop and change the authors and it can be a bit off-putting, like changing the actor who plays Doctor Who or Bond himself. They were looking to develop a brand.
Roger Moore 1927-2017