Description
By (author) Conan Doyle, Arthur
Short /annotation:
When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles” heir comes to an equally gruesome end.
:
One of the BBC”s ”100 Novels That Shaped Our World”
The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and remains one of Sherlock Holmes”s greatest and most popular adventures.
Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And, immersed in another case, he sends Dr Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects at close hand. With its atmospheric setting on the ancient, wild moorland and its savage apparition, The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. Rationalism is pitted against the supernatural and good against evil as Sherlock Holmes sets out to defeat a foe almost his equal.
This edition contains a full chronology of Arthur Conan Doyle”s life and works, an introduction by renowned horror scholar Professor Christopher Frayling discussing the background to the novel and the legends and events that inspired the story, with further reading and explanatory notes.
”Arthur Conan Doyle is unique … Personally, I would walk a mile in tight boots to read him to the milkman”
Stephen Fry
Review quote:
“The whole Sherlock Holmes saga is a triumphant illustration of art’s supremacy over life.” —
Christopher Morley
Biographical note:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and died in 1930. Within those years was crowded a variety of activity and creative work that made him an international figure and inspired the French to give him the epithet ”the good giant”. He was the nephew of ”Dickie Doyle” the artist, and was educated at Stonyhurst, and later studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where the methods of diagnosis of one of the professors provided the idea for the methods of deduction used by Sherlock Holmes.
Promotional headline:
The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body, this classic horror story pits detective against dog.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER I
Mr. Sherlock Holmes
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring. “Well, Watson, what do you make of it?” Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. “How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.” “I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,” said he. “But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor’s stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.” “I think,” said
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