Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, eventually studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and built his writerly ambitions there. He published his first short story when he was only 20 and still deep in his medical training. He achieved his Doctor of Medicine in 1885 and continued professional studies as he continued to write and write and write. In 1886 he sold A Study in Scarlet, featuring a detective who was based on an instructor he had in medical school. It was published a year later, and the definition of what constituted a mystery in Western fiction began to be forever changed.
Within a few years of the debut of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was ready to kill him off and move on to his many other projects, thus betraying a pattern of never quite understanding what was best for himself as a writer. Eventually, however, Holmes and Watson were featured in 56 short stories and 4 novels. The tension between rationality and suspense, between dissection and animation, was a powerful creative drive for Doyle. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to have understood it, and sometimes it is captured perfectly, flawlessly. It has been a gift to over a century of other writers, those who work within the canon’s inspiration and those who push back in various ways.
Doyle kept writing his science fiction and his beloved historical novels as he nailed down immortality with Sherlock Holmes. We carry what we can of what is in print. He is a good writer for that bridge age between YA and adult literature, by the way. And the comfort of his storytelling style, even when one thrills to the Hound of the Baskervilles all over again, makes him a writer for all ages and tastes and backgrounds. Enjoy!
The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear [Macmillan Collector's Library]
The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear [Macmillan Collector's Library]
Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of Doyle's best-known Holmes novels, frequently adapted for film and television, which is not surprising given the highly dramatic scenes of mist-wrapped moors echoing to the horrific howls of a supernatural hound. Is this a genuinely devilish apparition or is there a cunning murderer at work? Only Sherlock Holmes can solve the mystery. This volume also contains The Valley of Fear, a dark, powerful tale in which Holmes confronts the evil Professor Moriarty once more.
With an Afterword by David Stuart Davies, a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, and an authority on Sherlock Holmes. He has written the Afterwords for all the Macmillan Collector's Library Holmes volumes.