Goldfinger (novel)

Goldfinger

First edition cover, published by Jonathan Cape
Author	Ian Fleming
Cover artist	Richard Chopping
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	James Bond
Genre	Spy fiction
Publisher	Jonathan Cape
Publication date	23 March 1959
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Preceded by	Dr. No
Followed by	For Your Eyes Only

Goldfinger is the seventh novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 23 March 1959. Goldfinger originally bore the title The Richest Man in the World and was written in January and February 1958. The story centres on the investigation by MI6 operative James Bond into the gold smuggling activities of Auric Goldfinger, who is also suspected by MI6 of being connected to SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence organisation. As well as establishing the background to the smuggling operation, Bond uncovers a much larger plot, with Goldfinger planning to steal the gold reserves of the United States from Fort Knox.

Fleming developed the James Bond character more in Goldfinger than in the previous six novels, presenting him as a more complex individual, whilst also bringing out a theme of Bond as Saint George. The Saint George theme is echoed by the fact that it is a British agent sorting out an American problem.

In common with Fleming's other Bond stories, he used the names of people he knew, or knew of, throughout his story, including the book's eponymous villain, who was named after British architect Ernő Goldfinger. Upon learning of the use of his name, Goldfinger threatened to sue over the use of the name, before the matter was settled out of court. Fleming had based the actual character on American gold tycoon Charles W. Engelhard Jr. Fleming also used a number of his own experiences within the book, and the round of golf played with Goldfinger was based upon a tournament in 1957 at the Berkshire Golf Club in which Fleming partnered the Open winner Peter Thomson.

Upon its release, Goldfinger went to the top of the best-seller lists; the novel was broadly well received by the critics, being favourably compared to contemporary version of both Sapper and John Buchan. Goldfinger was serialised as a daily story and as a comic strip in the Daily Express newspaper, before being the third James Bond feature film of the Eon Productions series, released in 1964 and starring Sean Connery as Bond. Most recently, Goldfinger was adapted for BBC Radio with Toby Stephens as Bond and Sir Ian McKellen as Goldfinger.

Plot

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." Miami, Sandwich and now Geneva. I propose to wring the truth out of you

Goldfinger

Happenstance
While changing planes in Miami after closing down a Mexican heroin smuggling operation, the British Secret Service operative James Bond meets Junius Du Pont, a rich American businessman whom Bond briefly met and gambled with in Casino Royale. Du Pont asks Bond to watch Auric Goldfinger, with whom Du Pont is playing Canasta in order to discover if he is cheating. Bond quickly realises that Goldfinger is indeed cheating with the aid of his female assistant, Jill Masterton, who is spying on DuPont's cards. Bond blackmails Goldfinger into admitting it and paying back DuPont's lost money; Bond also has a brief affair with Masterton. Back in London, Bond's superior, M, tasks him with determining how Goldfinger is smuggling gold out of the country; M also suspects Goldfinger of being connected to SMERSH and financing their western networks with his gold. Bond visits the Bank of England for a briefing with Colonel Smithers on the methods of gold smuggling.

Coincidence
Bond contrives to meet and have a round of golf with Goldfinger; Goldfinger attempts to win the golf match by cheating, but Bond turns the tables on him, beating him in the process. He is subsequently invited back to Goldfinger's mansion near Reculver where he narrowly escapes being caught on camera looking over the house. Goldfinger introduces Bond to his factotum, a Korean named Oddjob.

A 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost

Issued by MI6 with an Aston Martin DB Mark III, Bond trails Goldfinger as he takes his vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (adapted with armour plating and armour-plated glass), driven by Oddjob, via air ferry to Switzerland. Bond manages to trace Goldfinger to a warehouse in Geneva where he finds that the armour of the Rolls-Royce is actually white-gold, cast into panels at his Kent refinery. When the car reaches the factory in Switzerland (Enterprises Auric AG), he recasts the gold from the armour panels into aircraft seats and fits them to the Mecca Charter Airline, in which he holds a large stake. The gold is finally sold in India at a large profit. Bond foils an assassination attempt on Goldfinger by Jill Masterton's sister, Tilly, to avenge Jill's death at Goldfinger's hands: he had painted her body with gold paint, which killed her. Bond and Tilly attempt to escape when the alarm is raised, but are captured.

Enemy action
Bond is tortured by Oddjob when he refuses to confess his role in trailing Goldfinger. In a desperate attempt to survive being cut in two by a circular saw, Bond offers to work for Goldfinger, a ruse that Goldfinger initially refuses, but then accepts. Bond and Tilly are subsequently taken to Goldfinger's operational headquarters in a warehouse in New York City. They are put to work as secretaries for a meeting between Goldfinger and several gangsters (including the Spangled Mob and the Mafia), who have been recruited to assist in "Operation Grand Slam"—the stealing of the United States Bullion Depository's gold from Fort Knox. One of the gang leaders, Helmut Springer, refuses to join the operation and is killed by Oddjob. Learning that the operation includes the killing of the inhabitants of Fort Knox by introducing poison into the water supply, Bond manages to conceal a capsule containing a message into the toilet of Goldfinger's private plane, where he hopes it will be found and sent to Pinkertons, where his friend and ex-counterpart Felix Leiter now works.

Operation Grand Slam commences, and it turns out that Leiter has found and acted on Bond's message. A battle commences, but Goldfinger escapes. Tilly, a lesbian, hopes that one of the gang leaders, Pussy Galore (the leader of a gang of lesbian burglars), will protect her, but she is killed by Oddjob. Goldfinger, Oddjob and the mafia bosses all escape in the melee. Bond is drugged before his flight back to England and wakes to find he has been captured by Goldfinger, who has managed to hijack a BOAC jetliner. Bond manages to break a window, causing a depressurisation that blows Oddjob out of the plane; he then fights and strangles Goldfinger. At gunpoint, he forces the crew to ditch in the sea near the Canadian coast, where they are rescued by a nearby weathership.

Background and writing history

By January 1958 the author Ian Fleming had published five novel: Casino Royale in 1953, Live and Let Die in 1954, Moonraker in 1955, Diamonds Are Forever in 1956 and From Russia, with Love in 1957. A fifth, Dr. No, was being edited and prepared for production. That month Fleming travelled to his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica to write From Russia, with Love. He followed his usual practice, which he later outlined in Books and Bookmen magazine: "I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day." He returned to London in March that year with a 270-page typescript, the longest he had produced to that time. He initially gave the manuscript the title The Richest Man in the World; few alterations were made to the story before publication.

Although Fleming did not date the event within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—have identified different timelines based on events and situations within the novel series as a whole. Chancellor put the events of Goldfinger in 1957; Griswold is more precise, and considers the story to have taken place from late-April to early-June that year.

Fleming had long been fascinated with gold. He was a collector of Spanish doubloons, and he commissioned a gold-plated typewriter from the Royal Typewriter Company, although he never actually used it; he wrote with a gold-tipped ballpoint pen and included the theft or obtaining of gold in several of his stories. When researching for Goldfinger, Fleming reinforced his knowledge of gold by sending a questionnaire to an expert at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths—one of the livery companies of the City of London—with a list of queries about gold, its properties and the background of the industry, including smuggling.

Fleming had originally conceived the card game scene as a separate short story but instead used the device for Bond and Goldfinger's first encounter. The architect Ernő Goldfinger threatened to sue Fleming over the use of the name and, in retaliation, Fleming threatened to add an erratum slip to the book changing the name from Goldfinger to Goldprick and explaining why; the matter was settled out of court after the publishers, Jonathan Cape, paid his legal costs, agreed to ensure the name Auric was always used in conjunction with Goldfinger and sent him six copies of the novel.

Once Fleming completed the novel—which he found the easiest of all the Bond books to write—he thought he had exhausted his inspiration for for plots. He told the writer William Plomer—his friend who proof-read all the Bond books—that Goldfinger was to be "the last full length folio on Bond ... Though I may be able to think up some episodes for him in the future, I shall never be able to give him 70,000 words again".

Development

Plot inspirations

The clubhouse at Royal St George's Golf Club

Fleming based some points in the book on events he had read about previously. The pre-First World War death of a showgirl in Europe after she had covered herself in paint was one such idea, and the depressurisation of Goldfinger's plane was a plot device Fleming had intended to use elsewhere, but which he included in Goldfinger. Some years previously a plane had depressurised over the Lebanon and an American passenger had been sucked out of the window; Fleming, who was not a comfortable airline passenger, had made note of the incident to use it. As he had done in previous Bond novels, Fleming used the names of a number of friends or associates in the novel. The surname of Sir John Masterman, the MI5 agent and Oxford academic who ran the double cross system during the Second World War, was used as the basis for the Masterton sisters; Alfred Whiting, the golf professional at Royal St George's Golf Club, Sandwich, becoming Alfred Blacking; while the Royal St George's Golf Club itself became the Royal St Mark's, for the game between Bond and Goldfinger.

In June 1957 Fleming had played in the Bowmaker Pro-Am golf tournament at the Berkshire Golf Club, where he partnered the Open winner Peter Thomson: much of the background went into the match between Bond and Goldfinger. One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica, and later his lover, was Blanche Blackwell, mother of Chris Blackwell of Island Records; Fleming used Blanche as the model for Pussy Galore, although the name "Pussy" came from Mrs "Pussy" Deakin, formerly Livia Stela, an SOE agent and friend of his wife's.

Fleming's golf partner, John Blackwell, (a cousin to Blanche Blackwell) was also a cousin by marriage to Ernő Goldfinger and disliked him: it was Blackwell who reminded Fleming of the name. Fleming also disliked what Goldfinger was doing destroying Victorian buildings, replacing them with the architect's modernist designs, particularly a terrace at Goldfinger's own residence at 2 Willow Road. Fleming's golfing friend John Blackwell had his name used as the heroin smuggler at the beginning of the book, with a sister who was a heroin addict.

There were some similarities between Ernő and Auric: both were Jewish immigrants who came to Britain from Eastern Europe in the 1930s and both were Marxists. The fictional and real Goldfingers were physically very different. According to the historian Henry Chancellor the likely model for Goldfinger was the American gold tycoon Charles W. Engelhard Jr., who Fleming had met in 1949. Englehard had established a company, the Precious Metals Development Company, which circumvented numerous export restrictions, selling gold ingots directly into Hong Kong.

Characters

The character of Bond was developed more in Goldfinger than in the previous novels. Black considers that Bond "was presented as a complex character". Benson agrees, and sees Goldfinger as a transitional novel, with Bond becoming more human than in previous books and more concerned with what Benson calls "the mortal trappings of life". This manifests itself in the opening chapter of the book as Bond sits in Miami airport and thinks through his fight with and killing of a Mexican thug. Benson also sees that Bond has developed something of a sense of humour in Goldfinger, verbally abusing Oddjob, to Bond's own amusement.

The anthropologist Anthony Synnott examined several examples of racism in the Bond novels, and finds in Goldfinger examples of "the most blatant racism" of the series, all of which concern the Koreans; as an example, Synott highlights the sentence "putting Oddjob and any other Korean firmly in his place, which, in Bond's estimation, was rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy". Benson agrees that Bond is shown as a bigot in the passage quoted, and observes that this is the only point in all the works in which Fleming disparages a whole race.

... everything was out of proportion. Goldfinger was short, not more than five feet tall, and on top of the thick body and blunt, peasant legs, was set almost directly into the shoulders, a huge and it seemed almost exactly round head. It was as if Goldfinger had been put together with bits of other people's bodies. Nothing seemed to belong.

Goldfinger

The writer Anthony Burgess, in his 1984 work Ninety-nine Novels, describes Flaming's malefactor as "impossible villains, enemies of democracy, megalomaniacs"; Burgess goes on to write that Goldfinger "is the most extravagant of these". The character was described by Benson as "Fleming's most successful villain" to that point in the series, and Fleming gives him a number of character flaws that are brought out across the novel. Black writes that psychologically Goldfinger is warped, possibly because of an inferiority complex brought on by his shortness, in contrast to a number of Fleming's other over-sized villains. Physically he is odd, with a lack of proportion to his body. According to the literary analyst LeRoy L. Panek, in his examination of 20th century British spy novels, in several of Fleming's novels he uses "characters as psychological counters in a game of simplified psychology". Fleming writes that "Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. ... Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world", an opinion Black considers a reflection of the "racialism and crude psychology" of early-twentieth century literature.

Like many other of Fleming's villains, Goldfinger is not of British extraction (although he is a British citizen); other villains have been, for example, Russian, German, Jewish, Chinese-German or Slav. Synnott observes that in many of the Bond novels, including Goldfinger, "Ugliness, evil and foreignness go together, complementing and reinforcing each other. Ugliness symbolizes evil and evil is symbolized by ugliness and foreignness."

Fleming employs devices he uses elsewhere in the series to show Goldfinger is corrupt or outside what Fleming considered normal. Goldfinger cheats at cards and golf; Panek considers this is a traditional sign of gauche individual. Goldfinger does not consume cigarettes or alcohol—unlike many people of the time—but he does pay prostitutes; these beliefs of Goldfinger's are condemned by Fleming for being outside normal appetites.

Elizabeth Ladenson, the general editor of Romanic Review, thought the character of Pussy Galore to be "perhaps the most memorable figure in the Bond periphery". Galore was introduced by Fleming in order for Bond to seduce her, thereby proving Bond's masculinity of being able to seduce a lesbian. To some extent the situation also reflected Fleming's own opinions, expressed in the novel as part of Bond's thoughts, where "her sexual confusion is attributable to women's suffrage"; in addition, as Fleming himself put it in the book: "Bond felt the sexual challenge all beautiful Lesbians have for men." Ladenson points out that, unlike some Bond girls, Galore's role in the plot is crucial and she is not just there as an accessory: it is her change of heart that allows good to triumph over evil. The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and Tony Bennett consider that many of the female characters in the Bond series depart from Fleming's accepted cultural norms; both Pussy Galore and Tilly Masterson conform to this rule because they are lesbian. For those that Bond sleeps with, there is a back story explaining why they are outside Fleming's norm: in Pussy Galore's case, it is because she was raped by her uncle. According to Stephen Heath, the literature and cultural historian, Galore's lesbianism is explained by being anti-man, following the rape, and she is converted because, as she says in the book, "I never met a man before". Bond's 'conversion' of Galore from lesbian to his bed partner "reflected Fleming's sexual politics". It was, Black sees, a "crude end to the book, a form of happy ending".

Style

The sixth Bond novel, Dr. No began what the media historian James Chapman describes as "fantastic and highly improbable plots"; Chapman considers that Goldfinger maintains that trend. He also states that it is "the most implausible to Fleming's plots"; the novelist Raymond Benson—who later wrote a series of Bond novels—writes that the plot is impractical and that "sometimes there's no logic in the sequence of events" and the writer and academic Kingsley Amis—who also later wrote a Bond novel—writes that the novel was "more implausible than most". According to Panek there is an episodic approach in Fleming's works; in Goldfinger this manifests itself in the use of the card game—something also seen in Casino Royale and Moonraker; Benson considers the novel to be more episodic than Fleming's previous books.

Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Happenstance", "Coincidence" and" Enemy action"—which was how Goldfinger described Bond's three seemingly coincidental meetings with him. Like Dr. No, what seems to be a trivial event—in this case the card game—leads to what Chapman calls "a grandiose criminal conspiracy". The denouement to the novel is described by the historian Jeremy Black as "hurried and unsatisfactory", and the "one-man heroism" of the work is too stretched across the novel.

Benson and Fleming's biographer, Matthew Parker, considers Goldfinger is the "densest" of the Bond novels, with a fast pace and high action, in which Bond moves from Miami, via New York to London, then through Kent and northern France to Switzerland, then back to New York to Kentucky, to New York, Washington, and finally ditching the aeroplane in the North Atlantic.

Themes

As with other Bond novels, such as Casino Royale, gambling is a theme, with not only golf as part of the novel, but opening with the canasta game as well. Raymond Benson identified times in the novel when Bond's investigation of Goldfinger was a gamble too and cites Bond tossing a coin to decide on his tactics in relation to his quarry. Once more (as with Live and Let Die and Dr. No) it is Bond the British agent who has to sort out what turns out to be an American problem and this can be seen as Fleming's reaction to the lack of US support over the Suez Crisis in 1956 as well as Bond's warning to Goldfinger not to underestimate the English.

Aerial view of the Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox

Benson identifies a theme of Bond acting as Saint George in Goldfinger which, he says, has run in all the novels, but is finally stated explicitly in the book as part of Bond's thoughts. This is after Goldfinger reveals he will use an atomic device to open the vault "Bond sighed wearily. Once more into the breach, dear friend! This time it really was St George and the dragon. And St. George had better get a move on and do something". Jeremy Black notes that the image of the "latter-day St. George [is] again an English, rather than British image." According to Ladenson, by making Bond St George, "Goldfinger himself ... is a mere obstacle, the dragon to be got rid of before the worthy knight can make off with the duly conquered lady."

Goldfinger has an obsession with gold to the extent that Ladenson says that he is "a walking tautology". Ladenson lists both his family name and his first name as being related to gold ("Auric" is an adjective pertaining to gold); his clothes, hair, car and cat are all gold coloured, or a variant thereof; his Korean servants are referred to by Bond as being "yellow", or yellow-faced"; and he paints his women (normally prostitutes) gold before sex.

As with a number of other villains in the Bond novels, there is a reference to the Second World War, to show the post-war readers how eveil Bpond's villains were. Thus, Goldfinger employs members of the German Luftwaffe, Japanese and Koreans. For Operation Grand Slam, Goldfinger used the poison GB—now known as Sarin—which had been discovered by the Nazis. Pussy Galore's lesbian criminal gang has some members that look "like some young SS guardsman", to underline the connection to evil.

Publication and reception

Publication history

Goldfinger was published on 23 March 1959 in the UK as a hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape; it was 318 pages long and cost fifteen shillings. As with his previous four novels, Fleming came up with the concept of the front cover design, which featured a rose between a skull's teeth. He commissioned Richard Chopping to provide the artwork. According to Jonathan Hopson of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the cover's "macabre symbolism memorably expresses the novel's themes of greed, sex and death". The book was dedicated to "gentle reader, William Plomer". The novel went straight to the top of the best-seller lists. Fleming took part in a select number of promotional activities, including appearing on the television programme The Bookman and attending a book signing at Harrods. In May 1961 Pan Books published a paperback version of the novel in the UK, which sold 161,000 copies before the end of the year. Since its initial publication the book has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and has never been out of print.

Critical reception

Goldfinger received more positive reviews than Fleming's previous novel, Dr. No, which had faced widespread criticism in the British media. Writing in The Observer, Maurice Richardson thought that "Mr. Fleming seems to be leaving realism further and further behind and developing only in the direction of an atomic, sophisticated Sapper". Even when leaving reality behind, however, Richardson considers that Fleming, "even with his forked tongue sticking right through his cheek, ... remains maniacally readable". Richardson picked up on two areas relating to the characters of the book, saying that Goldfinger "is the most preposterous specimen yet displayed in Mr. Fleming's museum of super fiends", while, referring to the novel's central character, observed that "the real trouble with Bond, from a literary point of view, is that he is becoming more and more synthetic and zombie-ish. Perhaps it is just as well." Writing in The Manchester Guardian, Roy Perrott observed that "Goldfinger ... will not let [Bond's] close admirers down". Perrott thought that overall "Fleming is again at his best when most sportingly Buchan-ish as in the motoring pursuit across Europe"; he summarised the book by saying that it was "hard to put down; but some of us wish we had the good taste just to try".

The critic writing for The Times thought that Bond was "backed up by sound writing" by Fleming. The critic thought that although the plot was grandiose "it sounds – and is – fantastic; the skill of Mr. Fleming is to be measured by the fact that it is made not to seem so". For The Times Literary Supplement, Michael Robson considered that "a new Bond has emerged from these pages: an agent more relaxed, less promiscuous, less stagily muscular than of yore". Bond was not the only thing that was more relaxed, according to Robson, as "the story, too, is more relaxed". Robson saw this as a positive development, but it did mean that although "there are incidental displays of the virtuosity to which Mr. Fleming has accustomed us, ... the narrative does not slip into top gear until Goldfinger unfolds his plan". The Evening Standard looked at why Bond was a success and listed "the things that make Bond attractive: the sex, the sadism, the vulgarity of money for its own sake, the cult of power, the lack of standards". The Sunday Times called Goldfinger "Guilt-edged Bond", whilst the Manchester Evening News thought that "Only Fleming could have got away with it ... outrageously improbable, wickedly funny, wildly exciting".

Even the "avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man", Anthony Boucher, writing for The New York Times appeared to enjoy Goldfinger, saying "the whole preposterous fantasy strikes me as highly entertaining." Meanwhile, the critic for the New York Herald Tribune, James Sandoe considered the book to be "a superlative thriller from our foremost literary magician."

Burgess cites Goldfinger as one of the 99 best novels in English since 1939. "Fleming raised the standard of the popular story of espionage through good writing—a heightened journalistic style—and the creation of a government agent—James Bond, 007—who is sufficiently complicated to compel our interest over a whole series of adventures".

Adaptations

Main articles: James Bond (comic strip) and Goldfinger (film)

Goldfinger was serialised on a daily basis in The Daily Express newspaper from 18 March 1959 onwards. Fleming's original novel was adapted as a daily comic strip which was published in the same paper and syndicated around the world—the first of the novels to be adapted as such. The adaptation ran from 3 October 1960 to 1 April 1961, and Fleming received £1,500 for the British publicaiton and a percentage for syndicated copies. The adaptation was written by Henry Gammidge and illustrated by John McLusky. Goldfinger was reprinted in 2005 by Titan Books as part of the Dr. No anthology, which in addition to Dr. No, also included Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia, with Love.

Sir Ian McKellen: Goldfinger on BBC Radio 4

In 1964 Goldfinger became the third entry in the James Bond film series. Sean Connery returned as Bond, and the German actor Gert Fröbe played Auric Goldfinger. The film was mostly similar to the novel, but Jill and Tilly Masterton (renamed Masterson for the film) have shortened roles and earlier deaths in the story. The plot of the film was also changed from stealing the gold at Fort Knox to irradiating the gold vault with a dirty bomb.

The 1973 BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond), including James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring the hero being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever.

Following its successful radio version of Dr. No, produced in 2008 as a special one-off to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, Eon Productions allowed a second Bond story to be adapted. On 3 April 2010 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of Goldfinger with Toby Stephens (who played villain Gustav Graves in Die Another Day) as Bond, Ian McKellen as Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike as Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis.

See also

Quotations related to Goldfinger at Wikiquote

• List of James Bond novels and short stories
• Outline of James Bond

Notes and references

Sources

Books

• Amis, Kingsley (1966). The James Bond Dossier. London: Pan Books. OCLC 154139618. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Barnes, Alan; Hearn, Marcus (2001). Kiss Kiss Bang! Bang!: the Unofficial James Bond Film Companion. Batsford Books. ISBN 978-0-7134-8182-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Benson, Raymond (1988). The James Bond Bedside Companion. London: Boxtree Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85283-233-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bennett, Tony; Woollacott, Janet (1987). Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4160-1361-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bennett, Tony; Woollacott, Janet (2009). "The Moments of Bond". In Lindner, Christoph (ed.). The James Bond Phenomenon: a Critical Reader. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6541-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Black, Jeremy (2005). The Politics of James Bond: from Fleming's Novel to the Big Screen. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6240-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burgess, Anthony (1984). Ninety-nine Novels. New York: Summit Books. ISBN 978-0-6715-2407-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Chancellor, Henry (2005). James Bond: The Man and His World. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-6815-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Chapman, James (2009). Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. New York: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-515-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Eco, Umberto (2009). "The Narrative Structure of Ian Fleming". In Lindner, Christoph (ed.). The James Bond Phenomenon: a Critical Reader. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6541-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Faulks, Sebastian; Fleming, Ian (2009). Devil May Care. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-103545-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fleming, Ian; Gammidge, Henry; McLusky, John (1988). Octopussy. London: Titan Books. ISBN 1-85286-040-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fleming, Ian (2006a). Goldfinger. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-102831-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fleming, Ian (2006b). The Man with the Golden Gun. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-102823-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gant, Richard (1966). Ian Fleming: Man with the Golden Pen. London: Mayflower-Dell. OCLC 487676374. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Griswold, John (2006). Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-4259-3100-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Heath, Stephen (1982). The Sexual Fix. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-349-16767-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ladenson, Elizabeth (2003). "Pussy Galore". In Lindner, Christoph (ed.). The James Bond Phenomenon: a Critical Reader. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6541-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lycett, Andrew (1996). Ian Fleming. London: Phoenix. ISBN 978-1-85799-783-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Macintyre, Ben (2008). For Your Eyes Only. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7475-9527-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• McLusky, John; Gammidge, Henry; Hern, Anthony; Fleming, Ian (2009). The James Bond Omnibus Vol.1. London: Titan Books. ISBN 978-1-84856-364-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Panek, LeRoy (1981). The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890–1980. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press. ISBN 978-0-87972-178-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Parker, Matthew (2014). Goldeneye. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0-09-195410-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pearson, John (1967). The Life of Ian Fleming: Creator of James Bond. London: Jonathan Cape. OCLC 923185831. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Warburton, Nigel (2005). Ernö Goldfinger: the Life of an Architect. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4153-7945-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Journals and magazines

• "The British Hero". Radio Times. 4 October 1973. pp. 74–79.
• Hemley, Matthew (13 October 2009). "James Bond to return to radio as Goldfinger is adapted for BBC". The Stage. Retrieved 19 March 2010. {{cite magazine}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Synnott, Anthony (Spring 1990). "The Beauty Mystique: Ethics and Aesthetics in the Bond Genre". International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 3 (3): 407–26. doi:10.1007/BF01384969. JSTOR 20006960. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Newspapers

• Ezard, John (3 June 2005). "How Goldfinger nearly became Goldprick". The Guardian. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Irish buyer for Bond typewriter". The Irish Times. 6 May 1995. p. 10.
• "James Bond meets Auric Goldfinger". The Daily Express. 17 March 1959. p. 1.
• "New Fiction". The Times. 26 March 1959. p. 15.
• Perrott, Roy (26 March 1959). "Seven days to Armageddon". The Manchester Guardian. p. 8. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Richardson, Maurice (22 March 1959). "Sophisticated Sapper". The Observer. p. 25. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Robson, Michael (3 April 1959). "On the Seamy Side". The Times Literary Supplement. p. 198. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Tea with an Author". The Observer. 5 April 1959. p. 20.
• Thomson, Ian (6 June 2008). "Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming". The Independent. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Websites

• Clark, Gregory (2018). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 30 January 2018. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Goldfinger". BBC. Retrieved 3 October 2011.
• "Goldfinger". WorldCat. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
• "Goldfinger > Editions". Goodreads. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
• "Goldfinger (1964)". Screenonline. British Film Institute. Retrieved 10 October 2011.
• Hopson, Jonathan (22 March 2019). "The Midas Touch: 60 Years of Goldfinger". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 24 August 2019. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Ian Fleming's James Bond Titles". Ian Fleming Publications. Archived from the original on 10 August 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2015.