The Hound of the Baskervilles
Newnes, 1902.
First edition. Original red pictorial cloth, titles and decoration in gilt and black. Sixteen full page black and white plates by Sidney Paget. A very good copy, slightly cocked with a faded spine and a trace of wear to the spine ends. Covers clean and bright and internally fresh with a contemporary inscription to the front endpaper.
The most celebrated of all Sherlock Holmes novels, it marks the eagerly awaited return of the amateur detective to the printed page, after his supposed death in The Final Problem in 1893, although this story is set before that event; the reader had to wait until 1905 and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" before he did rise from the dead.
Original serialised in The Strand Magazine in 1901-02, the success of the novel was well anticipated and the first edition had a print run of 25,000 copies meaning that copies of the first editions are still not intrinsically rare. However, due to the physical composition of the book, most copies tend to see the spine become uneven as the binding loosens and the fugitive red pigment tends to fade, making nice copies increasingly seldom seen in commerce.
Stock ID: 44094
£3,750.00
