 First edition | |
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Longmans, Green & Co., London |
Publication date | 1895 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
The Stark Munro Letters is a novel by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1895 by Longmans, Green & Co. in London, England.
The book is heavily autobiographical, depicting Conan Doyle's relationship with his parents and his emerging interest in spirituality. It incorporates material he wrote early in 1891 on his rejection of Catholicism in favour of spiritualism. [1] The book was rewritten and collated at the Swiss health spa of Davos, where his wife was recuperating from an illness. This was shortly after he had published "The Final Problem", the story in which he killed off Sherlock Holmes; in writing The Stark Munro Letters he was attempting to expand his career in a more literary direction. In a letter to his mother dated 23 January 1894, he wrote that "It will make a religious sensation if not a literary - possibly both. I really don't think a young man's life has been gone into so deeply in English literature before." [2]
As an epistolary novel it takes the form of twelve long letters written by J. Stark Munro between March 1881 and November 1884 and sent to his friend Herbert Swanborough of Lowell, Massachusetts. Stark Munro is a recent graduate from medical school, and the letters, in part, detail his attempts to create a medical practice in partnership with the brilliant but unorthodox James Cullingworth—a narrative based on Doyle's experiences in Plymouth with Doctor George Turnavine Budd (medical doctor), [3] [4] [5] before he set up his own practice in Southsea, Portsmouth in 1882. [6]
The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle is mentioned in the "Ithaca" chapter of Ulysses. [7]
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely in Dartmoor, Devon, in England's West Country and follows Holmes and Watson investigating the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his apparent death in "The Final Problem", and the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led to the character's eventual revival.
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character and criminal mastermind created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to be a formidable enemy for the author's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He was created primarily as a device by which Doyle could kill Holmes and end the hero's stories. Professor Moriarty first appears in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1893. He also plays a role in the final Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, but without a direct appearance. Holmes mentions Moriarty in five other stories: "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", and "His Last Bow".
Adrian Malcolm Conan Doyle was the youngest son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his second wife Jean, Lady Doyle or Lady Conan Doyle. He had two siblings, sister Jean Conan Doyle and brother Denis, as well as two half-siblings, sister Mary and brother Kingsley.
Joseph Bell FRCSE was a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is best known as an inspiration for the literary character, Sherlock Holmes.
A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in English literature. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
Richard Gordon Lancelyn Green was a British scholar of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, and was generally considered the world's foremost scholar of these topics.
Naked Is the Best Disguise: The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes (ISBN 0-14-004030-7) is a 1974 book by Samuel Rosenberg speculating on alleged hidden meanings in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this context, the term "canon" is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle's original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters. Usually capitalized by aficionados of the Sherlockian game as "the Canon", the description of these 60 adventures as the Sherlock Holmes canon and the game of applying the methods of "Higher Criticism" to it was started by Ronald Knox as a playful use of the traditional definition of canon as an authoritative list of books accepted as holy scripture.
A Slight Trick of the Mind is the seventh book by American author Mitch Cullin.
The Sherlockian game is the pastime of attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from the 56 short stories and four novels that make up the Sherlock Holmes canon by Arthur Conan Doyle. It treats Holmes and Watson as real people and uses aspects of the canonical stories combined with the history of the era of the tales' settings to construct fanciful biographies of the pair.
Bertram Fletcher Robinson was an English sportsman, journalist, editor, author and Liberal Unionist Party activist. During his life-time, he wrote at least three hundred items, including a series of short stories that feature a detective called 'Addington Peace'. Following his untimely death at the age of just 36 years, speculation grew that Robinson was the victim of a curse bestowed upon him by an Egyptian antiquity at the British Museum, which he had researched whilst working as a journalist for a British newspaper. However, Robinson is perhaps best remembered for his literary collaborations with his friends and fellow Crimes Club members, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Max Pemberton.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Peter Costello is an author and editor, described by the American critic Robert Hogan in the Greenwood Dictionary of Irish Literature as “a contemporary embodiment” of the “tradition in Irish literature of the independent scholar, who has an erudition embarrassing to the professional academic”.
John H. Watson, known as Dr. Watson, is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Along with Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson first appeared in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887). "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" (1927) is the last work of Doyle featuring Watson and Holmes, although their last appearance in the canonical timeline is in "His Last Bow" (1917).
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (1859–1930) was a Scottish writer and physician. In addition to the series of stories chronicling the activities of Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr John Watson for which he is well known, Doyle wrote on a wide range of topics, both fictional and non-fictional. In 1876 Doyle entered the University of Edinburgh Medical School, where he became a pupil of Joseph Bell, whose deductive processes impressed his pupil so much that the teacher became the chief model for Holmes. Doyle began writing while still a student, and in October 1879 he had his first work—"The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley"—published in Chambers's Journal. He continued writing short works—both fictional and non-fictional—throughout his career, and had over 200 stories and articles published.
Undershaw is a former residence of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The house was built for Doyle at his order to accommodate his wife's health requirements, and is where he lived with his family from 1897 to 1907. Undershaw is where Doyle wrote many of his works, including The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The Narrative of John Smith (2011) is a novel written in 1883 by Arthur Conan Doyle, published posthumously by The British Library. In a work of narrative fiction, Doyle writes from the perspective of a middle-aged bachelor named John Smith recovering from rheumatic gout. Unlike his later work in detective fiction, fantasy, and science fiction, this novel unfolds through a series of tangential, essay-like thoughts stemming from observations on everyday life. The subjects are of a “personal-social-political complexion”.
George Wylie Hutchinson (1852–1942) was a painter and leading illustrator in Britain and was from Great Village, Nova Scotia, Canada. He illustrated the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Hall Caine, Robert Louis Stevenson and Israel Zangwill. His paintings inspired the poem "Large Bad Picture" and "Poem", both by Elizabeth Bishop, his great grand niece. Hutchinson was a contributor to and subject of the novel The Master (1895) by Israel Zangwill, with whom he was a close friend.
John Michael Drinkrow Hardwick, known as Michael Hardwick, was an English author who was best known for writing books and radio plays which featured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes. He adapted most of the episodes of the Sherlock Holmes BBC radio series 1952–1969.
The Stark Munro Letters public domain audiobook at LibriVox