[UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930 These three letters to a member of a family Doyle came to know while studying medicine in Edinburgh give a lively account of his struggles to set up as a doctor in Southsea while at the same time trying to establish himself as an author. He writes at one point, \u201cthe practice is stagnant\u201d and refers to several pre-Holmes writings: “…You will see a story of mine called ‘The Captain of the Polestar’ in the January (I think) Temple Bar. It ought to frighten you. I will not tell you of any other recent story for I have been getting among bad company, I fear, who used their adjectives somewhat freely as rough men will, and I should not like you to identify me with my characters\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930 In August 1889, a pair of up-and-coming authors were invited to dinner by James Marshall Stoddart, a Philadelphia publisher visiting London. <\/em>Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle enjoyed each other\u2019s company and by the end of a meal that has become legend, Stoddart commissioned them to write novellas to be published in Lippincott\u2019s Monthly Magazine<\/em>. The result was Wilde\u2019s The Picture of Dorian Gray <\/em>and Doyle\u2019s The Sign of the Four, <\/em>the second appearance of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle and Stoddart kept up their connection, and in this letter, Doyle writes about a theme that permeates his work, the wish for a strong bond he wants to see between Britain and America. Concerning the novel he is writing, which became The Refugees,<\/em> he explains that it will take place in France but have a \u201cstrong American tinge\u201d and adds, \u201cIt is so pleasing to me I think that my little books have made friends over there. Have I some subtle distant strain of American blood, or why is it that my heart always warms so toward your great country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930 Although Sherlock Holmes brought him fame and fortune, Doyle set greater store on his historical fiction, \u201cserious\u201d works which he hoped would embellish his reputation. Such novels as Micah Clark, The White Company,<\/em> and Rodney Sto<\/em>ne were well-received (and merit reading even today) but had nowhere near the success of Holmes. Like many of his contemporaries\u2014think of Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Hope, and Stanley Weyman\u2014Doyle was attracted to writing stories in which royals, ordinary citizens, honor, romance, travel, and swordplay appear, not always in equal measures. Set in the seventeenth century and with a broad scope encompassing the Court of Louis XIV and the transatlantic trials and tribulations of persecuted Huguenots as they leave France for the New World, The Refugees<\/em> was an ambitious undertaking. First appearing in installments in Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>, the book was published as a \u201ctriple-decker\u201d (a peculiarly Victorian form, suited for the circulating libraries) in May 1893. Doyle\u2019s unusually intimate inscription, \u201cwith Arthur\u2019s love\u201d dated prior to publication suggests strongly that this was the dedication copy, presented to his wife, Louisa Hawkins, who was increasingly ill with tuberculosis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Newsboy<\/strong> Now internationally-known and someone who had long wanted to visit America, Doyle embarked on a speaking tour of the United States under the auspices of the impresario Major James B. Pond, the Civil War veteran who dominated the market for importing British lecturers. This photograph, taken shortly after Doyle\u2019s arrival in New York, showed how widespread the interest was in the creator of Sherlock Holmes. It was included in the Newsboy series of celebrity cards, distributed as a premium by the National Newsboy Tobacco Company when customers purchased their products. However, it is unclear what role Doyle had in the distribution of these images or if he or Pond had authorized their production. Due to its cheap production quality, this photograph is something of a rarity, despite having been issued in large numbers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930 Travelling up and down the East Coast and as far west as Chicago, Doyle was interviewed by the press and feted by the literary and social elite while he delivered some thirty lectures to large and (mostly) appreciative audiences. Shrewdly, he gave his listeners what they wanted to hear\u2014 Sherlock Holmes. These forty pages of drafts, some in the Doyle\u2019s hand, others corrected typescript (no complete authorial text survives), show how readings of passages from the Homes canon (\u201cThe Sign of the Four\u201d and \u201cThe Greek Interpreter\u201d are mentioned here) were integrated into an autobiographical account which touched also on Edgar Allan Poe and and referred to the recent, non-Holmes historical novels, The Refugees<\/em> and The White Company<\/em>. Present also in the fragments are portions of the two other lectures Doyle proposed to Pond, \u201cFacts about Fiction\u201d and \u201cThe Novels of George Meredith.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930 The title of this volume refers to the red lamp which, in Britain, traditionally identified a doctor\u2019s office. Of the thirteen medical and fantasy stories, the most interesting are “The Third Generation,” which brings up the taboo subject of syphilis, and \u201cThe Doctors of Hoyland,\u201d in which a young woman physician (a rarity in the 1890s) saves the life of the older local general practitioner, but rejects his proposal of marriage, wishing to keep her independence. Doyle was giving a lecture in Norwich, Connecticut, on the day he presented this first American edition to Major Pond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930 In this letter to the organizer of his American lecture tour, Doyle mentions several of his own stories and lectures, including \u201cThe Lord of Ch\u00e2teau Noir\u201d and makes arrangements, writing, \u201cI don\u2019t want to go to Wellesley College, but I should wish to leave a wreath on Holmes\u2019 grave.\u201d The \u201cHolmes\u201d referred to is not Sherlock, but Oliver Wendell Holmes, author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,<\/em> and like Doyle a physician as well as a writer\u2014and the likely source for the detective\u2019s surname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM]<\/p>\n\n\n\n My First Book: The Experiences of Walter Besant, James Payn, W. Clark Russell,<\/em> Grant Allen, Hall Caine, George R. Sims, Rudyard Kipling, A. Conan Doyle, M.E.<\/em> Braddon, F.W. Robinson, H. Rider Haggard, R.M. Ballantyne, I. Zangwill, Morley<\/em> Roberts, David Christie Murray, Marie Corelli, Jerome K. Jerome, John Strange<\/em> Winter, Bret Hart, Robert Buchanan, Robert Louis Stevenson \/ with an<\/em> Introduction by Jerome K. Jerome; and 185 Illustrations.<\/em> London: Chatto and Windus, 1894. Doyle\u2019s contribution to this omnibus of gossip recollections by popular authors of the day\u2014only a few of them still famous today\u2014told of a writing career that began at age six, matured decades later as Doyle contributed stories to periodicals when in need of money, and really began, after fits and starts, with the publication of Micah Clark<\/em> in 1885, two years before Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet.<\/em> \u201cJuvenilia\u201d had, like the other articles in the book, first appeared in The Idler, <\/em>the magazine founded and edited by Doyle\u2019s friend, Jerome K. Jerome, the author of the humor classic, Three Men in a Boat<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [UD_EXHIBITION_ITEM] Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859\u20131930Autograph letters to Jessie Drummond, 1882\u20131890Mark Samuels Lasner Collection These three letters to a member of a family Doyle came to know while studying medicine in Edinburgh give a lively account of his struggles to set up as a doctor in Southsea while at the same time trying to establish himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-exhibition.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-76","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/sherlock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Autograph letters to Jessie Drummond, 1882\u20131890
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Autograph letter to J. M. Stoddart, December 29, 1891<\/strong>
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents.<\/em> London : Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893
Presentation (dedication) copy from Doyle to his wife, Louisa
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Arthur Conan Doyle,<\/em> albumen cabinet card, New York, [1894]
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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North American Lecture:<\/em> autograph manuscript and typescripts, 1894
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Facets of Medical Life<\/em>. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1894.
Presentation copy from Doyle to Major James B. Pond
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Autograph letter to James B. Pond, October 22, 1894
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n