Lot 105
  • 105

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir

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Description

"A Study in Scarlet" [with other works] in Beeton's Christmas Annual.  London: Ward, Lock and Co., [1887]



In 8s (8  1/2  x 5  1/2  in.; 215 x 140 mm).  The Study illustrated by a wood-engraved frontispiece and three wood-engraved text illustrations, two after D. H. Friston and a third after W. M. R. Quick, the other texts illustrated by wood-engravings after R. André and Matt Stretch; skillful repairs to the margins of a few of the preliminary advertisements and to the frontispiece.  Original color-printed pictorial wrappers; much restored with bits of the upper and lower wrappers and all of the spine (rebacked) supplied in good facsimile.  Red buckram slipcase and chemise. 

Provenance

Sixth Marquis of Donegall (armorial bookplate in chemise) —purchased from the Donegall Estate by Lew David Feldman, House of El Dieff, Inc., December 1975

Literature

Blau "Prolegomenon to a Census of Beeton's Christmas Annual," Baker Street Journal 52 (1987) 16–19; De Waal 416; Lilly Detective Fiction 16; Locke 24

Catalogue Note

First edition of the  first Sherlock Holmes story. " That lurid paper-back of Christmas 1887 is today one of the rarest books of modern times—a keystone sought by discriminating collectors in every part of the world—flung like a bombshell into the field of detective fiction" (Starrett).