Beschreibung:

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE A collection of approximately 230 letters to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1884-1929, the correspondents including: George Moore (three letters), Noël Coward Douglas Fairbanks (two), Professor E. Ray Lankester, Francis Galton Lord Northcliffe, Lord Curzon, Earl of Rosebery (three), Morley Roberts, A.J. Balfour, Gerald Du Maurier, C.M. Yonge, Leslie Stephen, R. Baden Powell, A.T. Quiller-Couch, Sybil Thorndike, Vilhjalmur Stefansson (three), Kathleen Scott (wife of Robert Falcon Scott), E.D. Morel, Mrs Enrico Caruso Anthony Hope Hawkins (8), Lord Roberts, H. Rider Haggard (7), Ellen Terry (two), Arthur Pinero (two), John Masefield, Mrs Humphrey Ward, F.C. Burnand (two), Israel Zangwill (four), Linley Sambourne, Edmund Gosse (two), Owen Seaman and others; the remaining correspondents including detectives, aspiring writers, music hall performers, schoolmasters, Hungarians, a 'Total Disabled Sailor' from Portsmouth (who considers Conan Doyle 'a Priest'), and many other professions and nationalities. A number of correspondents write in praise of Conan Doyle's literary works: Lord Rosebery commends Sherlock Holmes, 'which if I happen to be ill is the one book I at once take to'; Francis Galton writes with reference to a question of detection in 1903, admitting that he has difficulty in imagining 'how a wax mould of a sealing-wax impression could leave a legible finger-print on a wall'. George Moore writes with compliments on a play he has read in manuscript, 'it made me cry like a child', while there is high praise from E. Ray Lankester of the Natural History Museum, for The Lost World , 'It is just sufficiently conceivable to make it "go" smoothly'. The critical attacks on A Duet seem to have prompted a number of stout commendations, with one correspondent assuring Conan Doyle that 'men and women whose hearts are not gall-bladders love it & thank you for writing it'; another writes that 'you have idealised the heart of the humdrum'; another, referring to the controversial meeting between the hero and his mistress, 'I don't see how anyone can object to the "Violet Incident"'. There are letters of appreciation too for The White Company , The Stark-Munro Letters , Sir Nigel , The Magic Door (preferred 'because it revealed more of your personality'), Memories and Adventures , the Brigadier Gerard stories, and Sherlock Holmes (one correspondent writes in 1930 that 'Sherlock ripens with advancing years'). There is a particularly warm commendation in 1913 from a Canadian schoolmaster, who hopes that his boys will be inspired by 'the love of honour & manliness & the hatred for everything mean & sordid, so beautifully exemplified in the life of Sir Nigel [Loring] ... to be better & more honourable men & more worthy citizens of the Empire'. A considerable body of the correspondence comprises requests for help or thanks for help received. These are from all sorts of people: William Burns (of the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, Inc) asks in 1915 for advice on a miscarriage of justice in Georgia; another correspondent writes in 1913 asking Conan Doyle to intervene in a 'sensational murder trial' in Warsaw; two interesting letters request his intervention in the case of the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels, naming as the chief suspect Ernest Shackleton's brother, and adding that 'Scotland Yard told me that the brother who is an explorer well versed in advertizing himself was a bad lot financially too'. Some letters are from simple enthusiasts: an elderly American lady writes in 1927 'What must God Be? to Create Such As You ? ... O You Wonder of the Earth'; James Douglas writes two years later, with admiration for Conan Doyle's Spiritualist work, 'What a tornado you are!'. A most charming letter from an Austro-Hungarian couple explains that they have learnt English solely by reading Conan Doyle's books, and begs to be excused 'all faults and our strange and clumsy style' (1910). The