Dr. No (novel) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Dr. No was very cardboardy and need not have been ... The trouble is that it is much more fun to think up fantastic situations and mix Bond up in them.

Dr. No was released on 31 March 1958 in the UK as a hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape, priced at 13s 6d. It was released in the US under the name Doctor No in June 1958 by Macmillan. As with his previous four novels, Fleming himself came up with the concept of the front cover design; as he had considered Honeychile Rider to have a Venus-like quality when introduced in the book, he wanted this echoed in the cover, which he commissioned to show her on a Venus elegans shell; the final artwork was undertaken by Pat Marriott.

Prior to the release of Dr. No – and unconnected with the book itself – Bernard Bergonzi, in the March 1958 issue of Twentieth Century attacked Fleming's work, saying that it contained "a strongly marked streak of voyeurism and sado-masochism" and that the books showed "the total lack of any ethical frame of reference". The article also compared Fleming unfavourably to John Buchan and Raymond Chandler in both moral and literary measures.

In 1964 Dr. No was serialised in France Soir for the French market and the year marked the growth of sales in Bond novels for that market, with 480,000 French-language copies of the six Bond novels being sold that year. The largest boost in books sales came in 1962 with the release of the film version of the same name and the subsequent Bond films. In the seven months after the film Dr. No was released, 1.5 million copies of the novel were sold.