Arthur Conan Doyle | The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Hound of the Baskervilles. London: George Newnes, 1902

FIRST EDITION, 8vo, half-title, 16 plates after Sidney Paget, original pictorial red cloth, upper cover with hound design stamped in gilt and black, spine gilt, some spotting to first few leaves, rubbed, especially at spine ends, marks to lower cover

"...Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!..."

The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the most celebrated crime novels of all time, was inspired by Bertram Fletcher Robinson (Daily Express correspondent during the Boer War), with whom Doyle struck up a friendship when travelling back on the same ship from Cape Town. On a golfing holiday in 1901 Robinson mentioned the legend of the Black Hound of Hergest associated with the Vaughan family of Hergest Court in Herefordshire. Doyle subsequently re-located his version of the story, with Sherlock Holmes as the main protagonist, to Dartmoor in Devon, Robinson's native county. Holmes wrote to his mother on 2 April 1901: "Robinson and I are exploring the moor over our Sherlock Holmes book. I think it will work out splendidly... Holmes is at his very best, and it is a highly dramatic idea". The book was published on 25 March 1902 in an edition of 25,000 following the story's unprecedented success in Strand Magazine.

LITERATURE

Green and Gibson A26a; Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone

PROVENANCE

"Cecil S. Barry. April 29. 02" (ownership inscription); The Alexis Galanos Collection