The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader: From Sherlock Holmes to Spiritualism

Best known as the creator of the consulting detective par excellence Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a man of wide-ranging interests and talents, and his literary output went far beyond his Holmes and Watson stories. The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader collects works from all the genres in which he wrote, including mysteries, historical adventure tales, science fiction stories, ghost stories, plays, memoirs, essays on spiritualism (in which he was a dedicated believer) and reports on the Boer War and World War I. This collection features the account of Watson's first meeting with Holmes from A Study in Scarlet, an account of the dinosaurs inhabiting The Lost World, tales of Doyle's Napoleonic hero Brigadier Gerard, a condemnation of Belgium's exploitation of the Congo, and the complete text of his apocalyptic book The Poison Belt, in addition to several other stories and excerpts.

About the Author :
Jeffrey Meyers is the author of Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, Gary Cooper: American Hero, and Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation. Valerie Meyers is the author of a book on Orwell's fiction and articles on Wyndham Lewis, Hemingway and Barbara Pym. The Meyers live in Berkeley, California.

Review :
The Meyers' introduction is detailed, informative, and enjoyable. This reader will be well received by Doyle's fans and perhaps even earn him some new fans who never knew that he created worlds outside of Holmes. For all the much-deserved fame and respect accorded him for his creation of the cocaine-addicted sleuth of Baker Street, it is perhaps Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s non-Holmes work which best displays the author's literary talent and virtuosity. Now, with their perceptive and thoughtful The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader, editors Jeffrey and Valerie Meyers provide a single home for an impressive cross-section of the author’s fiction and non-fiction, giving ample proof of Conan Doyle’s storytelling skills and the dizzying diversity of his ideas and styles. [Included are] Holmes mysteries, horror, science fiction and adventure yarns, historical and sporting stories, plus excerpts from some of Conan Doyle’s hard-to-find volumes of non-fiction and letters... Essential, my dear Watson, quite essential! Here, in a single volume, is a first-class introduction to the life and work of Arthur Conan Doyle. The introduction provides a superb critical summing up of a very complex personality and outlines some of the major aspects of his work. The addition of the selections themselves, many long out of print, makes this an essential volume: a book to gain knowledge from as well as to enjoy. ...readers unfamiliar with anything but the Sherlock Holmes stories will be seeking out Conan Doyle's other books after sampling some of the material collected in this handsome volume. Particularly appealing to this reader were the Errol Flynn-like escapades of Brigadier Etienne Gerard—an officer in Napoleon's army with a rather high opinion of himself—or the clever and entertaining adventures of Professor Challenger and his companions in The Lost World or the doomsday scenario as depicted in The Poison Belt.