ISBN : 9780198734291
'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.
REVIEWS:
"This volume provides a welcomed and much-needed reminder of the full range of Conan Doyleâs achievement, deepening our appreciation of his unbounded imagination and fertile legacy." - Christopher Metress, English Literature in Transition 1880â1920
"The introduction and notes, by the book's editor Darryl Jones, helpfully explain the more obscure period details which are scattered throughout the book and where Doyle was at in his life with regards to the wide body of interests that occupied him when he was not writing." - Iain MacLeod, Gore in the Store
"Beautifully designed edition" - Times Literary Supplement
"This volume provides a welcomed and much-needed reminder of the full range of Conan Doyleâs achievement, deepening our appreciation of his unbounded imagination and fertile legacy." - Christopher Metress, English Literature in Transition 1880â1920
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