Facts about Fiction (report 2 december 1893)
This article was published in The Greenock Telegraph on 2 december 1893 in the "Variorum" section.
Report of a lecture "Facts about Fiction" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 1 december 1893 at the Watt Museum Hall (Greenock, UK).
Report
The committees of the Greenock Philosophical Society have resumed the old and kindly fashion of thanking lecturers for their efforts whether these lecturers be paid fees or not. Last night Mr Robert Caird proposed a vote of thanks to Dr Conan Doyle, and did it with considerable grace and tact. Evidently the hint given in this column three weeks ago has had some effect.
"Sherlock Holmes," who made his first bow before a Greenock audience yesterday evening, is a tall, dark-haired, heavy-built, and firmly knit, yet withal pleasant-faced and manly-looking literary Philistine. The lecture was in some respects a brilliant and remarkable one ; but to the seasoned novel reader it was quite as remarkable for what it did not contain as for what it did. Imagine a lecturer on "Facts about Fiction" — present-day fiction — getting through an hour and a quarter's dissertation without ever so much as mentioning such leaders of romance as Hall Caine, Grant Allen, Edna Lyall, Mrs Humphrey Ward, Walter Besant, and David Christie Murray !
