“one of the most gripping books in the language”

FIRST BOOK EDITION. First issue, with the error “you” for “your” on page 13, line 3.

The Hound of the Baskervilles remains “one of the most gripping books in the language” (Crime & Mystery 100 Best). “The supernatural is handled with great effect and no letdown. The plot and subplots are thoroughly integrated and the false clues put in and removed with a master hand. The criminal is superb … and the secondary figures each contribute to the total effect of brilliancy and grandeur combined. One wishes one could be reading it for the first time” (Barzun & Taylor).

The Hound of the Baskervilles, the third Sherlock Holmes novel, is widely regarded as the best of the series. Although Conan Doyle had killed off his most famous character by sending him over the Reichenbach Falls while grappling with Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem” (December 1893), his readers demanded the sleuth’s return. Almost a decade later, the author obliged with this, the third and best Sherlock Holmes novel, first serialized in The Strand Magazine in 1901-02. The book was presented as “another adventure” of Holmes, set two years before his supposed death at Reichenbach Falls. However, “the seed of doubt was planted,” as detective fiction authority Howard Haycraft noted, and readers continued to press for more. Conan Doyle finally relented and engineered Holmes’s “resurrection” in 1903.

This is an unusually handsome copy.

Green & Gibson, Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle A26. Le Monde Books of the Century 44.

$10,000