Valley of Fear - Couverture souple

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0586202676 ISBN 13 : 9780586202678

Editeur : HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1988

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur :

The creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous literary detective. Born in Scotland, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a practising doctor when he began to write tales of mystery and adventure. In addition to the Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle also wrote the Professor Challenger adventures, and his classic, The Lost World, is one of the original fantasy novels. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School. Graduating in 1881, he set up practice as an occultist, but as patients proved elusive he turned to writing. An important influence upon his literary career was his professor, Dr Joseph Bell, who could observe the most minute detail regarding a patient's condition. This master of deduction became the model for Conan Doyle's legendary literary creation, the detective Sherlock Holmes, introduced in A Study in Scarlet in 1887. Conan Doyle also espoused spiritualism and devoted considerable time and effort to a campaign of support for this cause. He also wrote successfully in genres other than detective fiction. His non-fiction includes military writing on the Boer War and pamphlets on spiritualism. It is known that he felt constricted at times by the popularity of Holmes, but it is nevertheless for Sherlock Holmes and his foil, the ponderous Dr Watson that he is best remembered. As Sherlock Holmes was the first detective to solve cases by deduction rather than due to an error by the criminal, Conan Doyle can be credited with creating the modern detective novel. He was knighted in 1902 for his support of the British cause in the Boer Wars. After the death of his son in the First World War, he devoted the rest of his life to spiritualism on which he wrote and lectured.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1859-1930)is chiefly remembered for his celebrated creation of detective Sherlock Holmes, whose brilliant solutions to a wide variety of crimes began in “A Study in Scarlet” (1887) first published in the “Strand Magazine” and collected in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (1894), “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” etc. His friend, Dr Watson, with whom he shares rooms in Baker Street, attends him throughout most of his adventures. The success was immediate and lasting, and Arthur Conan Doyle rose rapidly to prominence as a result. The stories of Edgar Allan Poe and of Emile Gaboriau were the major sources of inspiration. Gaboriau provided the sensational and the rational elements, but the art came from Edgar Allan Poe. The first six adventures are not true detective stories, though the detective is essential to them. They are fantasies and fairy stories, and their greatness lies not in applying and developing the methods of Gaboriau and Poe, but in their relation to the style, atmosphere, and ethos of the period. The reality of Sherlock Holmes was a quality which struck readers and critics alike. T.S. Eliot also succumbed to the spell: “The greatest of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries was that when we talk of him we invariably fall into the fancy of his existence.”

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0586202676
• ISBN 13: 9780586202678
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 208