The Souvenir Trilogy, Signed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
DOYLE, Sir Arthur Conan. The Sign of Four; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. London: George Newnes, Ltd. 1902; 1904; 1902.
Three volumes, 8vo. Original dark blue cloth, lettered and stamped in gilt to upper covers and spines after a design by Alfred Garth Jones, lower covers stamped in blind; upper edge gilt; pp [I:] [8], 285, [1]; [II:] [8], 341, [1], frontispiece and illustrations by Sidney Paget; [III:] [8], 296, frontispiece and illustrations by Paget; extremities lightly rubbed, spines a little sunned, slight spine lean; some occasional light spotting and light marks to pages and edges, some off-setting to endpapers, but generally very good; The Sign of Four with contemporary inscriptions in ink to front free endpaper and title (“… Xmas 1903”); The Memoirs with slip of paper signed by Doyle and pasted to title.
Souvenir editions, reprints (first published in 1901). The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes signed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to slip of paper pasted to title page.
The first two titles of the Souvenir Edition, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (originally titled in the Souvenir series as The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), were issued by Newnes in September 1901 to coincide with the opening of the play Sherlock Holmes at the Lyceum Theatre. The Sign of Four completed the trilogy in December 1901.
The Sign of Four, the second Sherlock Holmes novel, was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in February 1890, under the title The Sign of the Four, and was released in book form in October 1890 without the second ‘the’ of the original title. Likewise, in the following British and American editions, including the present Souvenir edition, the second “the” was omitted. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the earliest collection of Holmes short stories; originally published in twelve monthly issues of The Strand Magazine between July 1891 and June 1892, it first appeared in book form in October 1892. Finally, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is the second Holmes collection. First published in The Strand Magazine from December 1892 to December 1893, it appeared in book form in 1894.
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