Arthur Conan Doyle | The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902, first edition of perhaps the best-loved crime novel of all time

Arthur Conan Doyle

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

FIRST EDITION, 8vo (182 x 122 mm), 15 plates by Paget (only, of 16: lacking plate after p. 322), publisher's red cloth with gilt titles and decoration to spine and upper cover, stylised black hound to upper cover, plates after pp. 260 and 310 becoming detached and plate after p. 318 slightly creased, minor loss to lower corner of upper board, extremities slightly bumped

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

FIRST EDITION OF PERHAPS THE MOST CELEBRATED AND BEST-LOVED CRIME NOVEL OF ALL TIME. 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.

Doyle 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".

PROVENANCE:

Traces of erased contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper

LITERATURE:

Cooper & Pike, Detective Fiction, pp. 115–119; Green & Gibson A26a