In June 1956 the author Ian Fleming began a collaboration with the producer Henry Morgenthau III on a planned television series, Commander Jamaica, which was to feature the Caribbean-based character James Gunn. When the project foundered, and Fleming could not fashion a new plot for his next Bond novel, he used the idea as the basis for Dr. No.[2] By January 1957 he had published four Bond novels in successive years from 1953—Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever. A fifth, From Russia, with Love, was being edited and prepared for publication.[3][4][a] That month Fleming travelled to his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica to write Dr. No.[6] 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."[7] By the time he returned to London in late February, he had completed a 206-page first draft, which he initially titled The Wound Man.[6][8]
Although Fleming did not date the events within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—have identified different timelines based on episodes and situations within the novel series as a whole. Chancellor put the events of Dr. No in 1956; Griswold is more precise, and considers the story to have taken place that February and March.[9][10]
As with his four previous novels, Fleming originated the concept of the front cover design; he considered Honeychile Rider to have a Venus-like quality when introduced in the book and wanted this emphasised on the cover. When commissioning Pat Marriott to illustrate the cover, he instructed that she was shown on a Venus elegans shell.[2][11]
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 as containing "a strongly marked streak of voyeurism and sado-masochism"[12] and that the books showed "the total lack of any ethical frame of reference".[12] The article also compared Fleming unfavourably to John Buchan and Raymond Chandler in both moral and literary measures.[13] The writer Simon Raven, while appreciating Bergonzi had produced a "quiet and well-argued article", thought the critic's conclusion was naïve, and asked "Since when has it been remarkable in a work of entertainment that it should lack a specific 'ethical frame of reference'?" Raven continued, saying Fleming "by reason of his cool and analytical intelligence, his informed use of technical facts, his plausibility, sense of pace, brilliant descriptive powers and superb imagination, provides sheer entertainment such as I, who must read many novels, am seldom lucky enough to find".[14]
