'There was a rumour, too, that he was a devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had the evil eye...'
Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic Tales. Many of Doyle's writings are recognised as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes.
This collection brings together over thirty of Conan Doyle's best Gothic Tales. Darryl Jones's introduction discusses the contradictions in Conan Doyle's very public life - as a medical doctor who became obsessed with the spirit world, or a British imperialist drawn to support Irish Home Rule - and shows the ways in which these found articulation in that most anxious of all literary forms, the Gothic.
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
Chronology
The American's Tale
The Captain of the 'PoleStar'
The Winning Shot
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement
John Barrington Cowles
Uncle Jeremy's Household
The Ring of Thoth
The Surgeon of Gaster Fell
A Pastoral Horror
'De Profundis'
Lot No. 249
The Los Amigos Fiasco
The Case of Lady Sannox
The Lord of Château Noir
The Third Generation
The Striped Chest
The Fiend of the Cooperage
The Beetle-Hunter
The Sealed Room
The Brazilian Cat
The New Catacomb
The Retirement of Signor Lambert
The Brown Hand
Playing with Fire
The Leather Funnel
The Pot of Caviare
The Silver Mirror
The Terror of Blue John Gap
Through the Veil
How it Happened
The Horror of the Heights
The Bully of Brocas Court
The Nightmare Room
The Lift
Explanatory Notes
"As always in the Oxford Worlds Classic's editions, there is an informative introduction and extensive notes... An interesting and informative essay, happily written without any lit-crit jargon, making it both accessible and enjoyable for the general reader... I loved this collection." - Leah Galbraith, FictionFan Blog
"Superb introduction." - Christopher Metress, English Literature in Translation
"[An] informative introduction a book that fans of Conan Doyle's other work will likely find enjoyable: Sherlock Holmes it may not be, but the strongest of the tales included in the volume show how versatile Conan Doyle's talents were in the realm of popular fiction." - Oliver Tearle, Interesting Literature
"Shows there was more to Conan Doyle than Moriarty, Dr Watson and The Hound of the Baskervilles." - Keith Richmond, ASLEF Journal
"These Gothic Tales show Conan Doyle is the true master of the macabre and the gruesome." - Steve Craggs, Northern Echo
"5*: Collected in a scholarly edition for the first time, these are 33 of Conan Doyle's finest Gothic short stories... Even if you have already read the tales in other volumes, it is worth buying this book for Jones's introduction alone: it explores the tensions and contrasts that defined the author's life, and how he articulated these themes in his work, offering the latest in literary criticism and historical research." - The Lady
"This collection demonstrates still that Conan Doyle is still a master writer and... throws an interesting light on the career that wasnt Sherlock Holmes." - Nick Blackshaw, Starburst Magazine
"Review from previous edition [A] beautifully designed edition" - Times Literary Supplement
ISBN : 9780198734307
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