The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales
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The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales is a volume collecting 18 short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1911 by Smith, Elder & Co. and George Bell & Sons. Also titled The Passing of the Legions (R. Harold Paget [US]) in 1911.
Stories
- Preface by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Last Galley
- The Contest
- Through the Veil
- An Iconoclast
- Giant Maximin
- The Coming of the Huns
- The Last of the Legions
- The First Cargo
- The Home-Coming
- The Red Star
- The Silver Mirror
- The Blighting of Sharkey
- The Marriage of the Brigadier
- The Lord of Falconbridge
- Out of the Running
- De Profundis
- The Great Brown-Pericord Motor
- The Terror of Blue John Gap
Editions
- The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales (26 april 1911, Smith, Elder & Co. [UK]) Frontispiece by N. C. Wyeth, 1 ill. by Harry Rountree
- The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales (26 april 1911, George Bell & Sons Indian and Colonial Library No. 1000 [UK]) Frontispiece by N. C. Wyeth, 1 ill. by Harry Rountree
- The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales (september 1911, Doubleday, Page & Co. [US]) Frontispiece by N. C. Wyeth, 1 ill. by Harry Rountree
- The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales (may 1911, Bernhard Tauchnitz No. 4260 [DE])
- in The Crowborough Edition of the Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle vol. 4 (1930, Doubleday, Doran & Co. [US])
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Smith, Elder & Co. (1911)
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Doubleday, Page & Co. dustjacket (1911)
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Doubleday, Page & Co. (1911)
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Doubleday, Page & Co. title page (1911)
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Bernhard Tauchnitz (1911)
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Thomas Nelson & Sons (1917)
Illustrations
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"All day, held spell-bound by this wonderful sight, the hermit crouched in the shadow of the rocks."
Frontispiece by N. C. Wyeth (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1911) -
"He had reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do, and stood above me, enormous, menacing."
Illustration by Harry Rountree (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1911)
Preface
I have written "Impressions and Tales" upon the title-page of this volume, because I have included within the same cover two styles of work which present an essential difference. The second half of the collection consists of eight stories, which explain themselves. The first half is made up of a series of pictures of the past which maybe regarded as trial flights towards a larger ideal which I have long had in my mind. It has seemed to me that there is a region between actual story and actual history which has never been adequately exploited. I could imagine, for example, a work dealing with some great historical epoch, and finding its interest not in the happenings to particular individuals, their adventures and their loves, but in the fascination of the actual facts of history themselves. These facts might be coloured with the glamour which the writer of fiction can give, and fictitious characters and conversations might illustrate them; but none the less the actual drama of history and not the drama of invention should claim the attention of the reader. I have been tempted sometimes to try the effect upon a larger scale; but meanwhile these short sketches, portraying various crises in the story of the human race, are to be judged as experiments in that direction.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
WINDLESHAM, CROWBOROUGH, April, 1911.