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Conan Doyle, Arthur.T
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Publisher: George Newnes, Ltd., Southampton Street, Strand, London;
Date of Publication: 1896
Stock Code: 15725
Early edition, printed shortly after the second of 1895, after the first of 1892. Octavo, pp., [vi], 341, [3] publisher’s advertisements. Illustrations within text by Sidney Paget. Publisher’s original navy buckram; titles and sphinx vignettes to spine and to upper board; publisher’s device in blind to lower board; top edge gilt. Gift inscription in ink dated 1914 to front paste-down. Corners bumped with further shelf-wear to edges; spine a touch shaken; scuffs to lower board. Lacking front free end-paper; minor finger-marks to edges otherwise generally quite bright. A very good copy. An early edition of what were originally intended to be the last Sherlock Holmes stories. Originally published in the Strand in 1891, this collection of what Conan Doyle dismissively called ‘police romances’ catapulted Holmes into the Victorian popular imagination. Among these ‘Adventures’ is ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ of which Conan Doyle’s agent, A. P. Watt wrote: ‘[it was] a gift from heaven, a godsend in the shape of a story that brought a gleam into the despairing life of this weary editor. Here was a new and gifted story-writer; there was no mistaking the ingenuity of the plot, the limpid clearness of style, the perfect art of telling a story’ (quoted in Green and Gibson, p. 59). £100.00