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Conan Doyle, Arthur.
A Study in Scarlet.
Publisher: Ward, Lock & Bowden, Limited, London;
Date of Publication: 1894
Stock Code: 15615
Second edition, [sixth impression?], after the first of 1887. Crown octavo, pp., [i]-xx, [1]-224, 12 of publisher’s advertisements. With frontispiece, fourteen illustrated words (one for each chapter), eleven full page illustrations within text, and fourteen vignettes by George Hutchinson. Publisher’s oat-coloured buckram over scarlet spine; titled in gilt to spine, and in scarlet to upper board; floral scroll end-papers. Contemporary bookplate of Lambeth Art Pottery [i.e. Doulton] Circulating Library to front paste-down. Former ownership inscription of one ‘Charles Gazeley’ to front free end-paper. Spine sunned with area of flaking approx 5cm; shelf-wear to edges; soiling to cloth; lower hinge cracked, upper hinge starting; text-block slightly cocked. Light toning and spotting, largely restricted to margins, throughout. A complete, unsophisticated copy in original cloth. Sherlock Holmes’ first mystery, recounted in this novel, begins with some ‘bad business’ at 3 Lauriston Gardens off the Brixton Road, in Lambeth. Fittingly, then, that this copy was from the obscure circulating library of the Lambeth pottery firm of Doulton. Read by workers at Doulton’s factory at Vauxhall Walk, this book spent its early life among the very streets in which the London sections of the novel were set. This copy conforms with Green and Gibson’s description of the second edition fifth impression, except the date on the title-page is 1894, not 1893, it is therefore likely the sixth impression, as the bibliographers do not describe a third edition until 1895. £175.00