Collecting the Non-Sherlockian Works of Arthur Conan Doyle
Collecting the Non-Sherlockian Works of Arthur Conan Doyle is an article written by David G. Kirby published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This practical guide surveys the collecting of Arthur Conan Doyle's non-Sherlockian works, outlining major publishing categories, bibliographies, editions, market practices, and strategies for building a representative collection. Drawing on bookselling expertise, it explains edition identification, valuation, and the historical breadth of Conan Doyle's literary output beyond Holmes.
Collecting the Non-Sherlockian Works of Arthur Conan Doyle
Two particularly appealing items for the collector of ACD's non-Sherlockian writings: The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct and the two-volume first edition of The History of Spiritualism complete with dust jackets.
- In the short space of only seven years, David Kirby's Rupert Books came to be recognised throughout the U.K., North America, and elsewhere-as the world's leading specialist in the fields of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. One does not come by such a reputation undeservedly. The high regard in which Dave was held was based upon the quality of his stock, which encompassed the entire scope of Conan Doyle's literary output; his knowledge of that vast array of books, pamphlets and ephemerae, which was impressive; and, above all, the trust he generated. It was, perhaps most of all, delightful to buy books from David Kirby. One could always turn to him for nearly all of one's wants, be they first editions, specific reprints (Colonial, Cabinet, Souvenir and Uniform editions come to mind), or the latest Doylean and Sherlockian publications. One could always ask him, for instance, how one identifies a first edition of Danger! and Other Stories, or whether the softcover or cloth issues of The Crime of the Congo or Pheneas Speaks represent the true first editions of these works. In this sense Dave was an educator, and it was for this reason that his untimely death on 3 June 1991 was felt so keenly amongst so many collectors, for they had lost both a guide and an invaluable source of bibliographic information. Rupert Books survived its founder's passing, fortunately, and continues to build upon the foundations of quality, knowledge and trust that Dave brought to the field. Conan Doyle believed that he would be able to communicate with those he left behind after his own death. In a sense David Kirby continues to share his expertise with us from beyond the grave in this short article, originally written for ACD in 1991.
- R. Dixon Smith
When I first strated in a very small way, some seven or eight years ago, to buy and sell books written by, and about, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, my main interest lay with his works outside the Sherlock Holmes canon. I had begun to collect his general fiction and other titles some years prior to the issue of my first very amateurish catalogue, and that initial listing reflected this very personal bias. It rapidly became apparent, however, from the very first orders to arrive, that the great majority of my newly-found customers wanted Holmes and Sherlockiana and little else: books in these two categories were always the first to sell.
That this still holds true is reflected in the fact that each new catalogue I issue has increasingly larger sections devoted to Holmes. As a business man I have to follow the market trends and remain very much in the mainstream. It is also true to say that more has been written about Holmes and Watson, both in the critical and analytical forms, or as pastiche and parody, than about anything else which originated from Conan Doyle's pen. However, I still have a preference for Conan Doyle's other fiction, which I think has been greatly under-rated in almost every respect for a very long time. It is for this particular reason that I am pleased to have been asked to write this article on the subject of collecting Conan Doyle's non-Sherlockian books. Before I begin, however, I can happily say that of late I have noticed a slight change in emphasis. Judging by what I have been asked for directly and what has been selling from the catalogue, it could well be that Conan Doyle's other work will now, at last, form a more important part of any collection.
Conan Doyle's interests ranged across a wide variety of subject matter and he invariably wrote, in one form or another, upon that in which he had an interest. He wrote, both in fictional format or as straight-forward articles and books, upon subjects as diverse as science fiction, military history, mediaeval romance, the Napoleonic era, the domestic situation, miscarriages of justice and, of course, Spiritualism. To digress slightly, I think it more than a little insulting to the man that this latter aspect of his life and work has been so thoroughly ignored, or disposed of in a paragraph or two, by his various biographers. The same could, to some degree, also be said for the treatment of his other major works. I am by no means an apologist for Conan Doyle, but he has, in my eyes, been ill-treated critically and has not been given the ranking he surely deserves in the literature of the period from the late Victorians onwards.
The intention of this article is to give a very general over-view of the various and widely differing fields open to the collector, and some ideas on how to put a representative selection of books together. It will not be a list: bibliographical chapter and verse is more easily obtained by direct reference to A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle by Richard Lancelyn Green & John Michael Gibson (1983). Green & Gibson is now out of print and, as bibliographies tend to climb rapidly in value and are quite difficult to find once they have disappeared from the publisher's stocklist, the tyro collector should find Goldscheider's checklist more readily available. The latter will certainly be much easier on the pocket, and is a useful starting point in obtaining an idea of what to look for. (Conan Doyle Bibliography by Gaby Goldscheider, Windsor, 1977; revised with minor correction, 1979.)
For the collector who would like to be as complete as possible, there is a third bibliography, the first full-length bibliography of Conan Doyle, which was published during his lifetime. Compiled by Harold Locke and published in 1928, A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., LL.D only covers work up to early 1928, and is renowned both for its omissions and mistakes. It is an important work nevertheless, if only for the fact that it was the first, and for many years the only, bibliography available. It is now a rarity in its own right and a very good copy, in original paper-covered boards complete with front cover and spine labels, would cost more than Green & Gibson and Goldscheider together-a great deal more. There have been other checklists issued over the years, some dealing with Sherlock Holmes material alone; others based around the large general collections in both private hands and institutions; and even more deal in depth with just a single title.
Another very useful source of information, overlooked more often than not, is the bookseller's catalogue. Specialist booksellers should have all the relevant bibliographical material to hand. I probably use my Green & Gibson every working day, and this should be apparent from reading the catalogue. Specialists' catalogue entries will note major points of interest about any particular book or edition, will reflect the latest information available and any new material that has been unearthed, and should give an up-to-date guide as to prices being asked.
On the subject of prices, it is a truism in the book world that collectable books in good condition very rarely decrease in value. Careful scrutiny of lists and catalogues can pinpoint what books are, or more importantly are not, in favour at any particular time, so with judicious timing the collector's buying power can be maximised. It is also an undeniable fact that booksellers are not infallible and all make glaring errors in valuations, both up and down-so do not take everything as gospel. A final point on this topic: booksellers have occasionally been accused of overpricing-yes, it has been said to me as well! All that needs to be said is that the prices asked are usually reflections of the market place: the dealer who consistently asks too high a price will not stay in business for very long.
This leads me to the subject of where and how to start, or add to, a collection of Conan Doyle's works. For the majority of serious collectors the catalogue will be a main source of material. Find a good selection of catalogue booksellers and stay with them: the professional bookseller has sources that are usually unavailable to others. Another source of books is to be found in auction sales, but here you have to take pot-luck, as a coveted item could well be part of a lot, and auction fever could well result in your paying more than is necessary. A third, and the most commonly-known, method of finding material is by doing the rounds of bookshops.
It is certainly true that real bargains can be found in a general bookseller's shop, but it is also true that their books are picked over frequently by full-time runners (gatherers for the professional end of the market) and others, with the result that rarities are becoming harder to find. I know from experience and from what customers tell me that it is getting to be an all-too-regular experience to find shops that have no Conan Doyle material at all.
All collections have to be geared towards the amount of funds which are available. If money is no object, the only advice I would give would be to collect nothing but first editions in as fine a condition as it is possible to obtain-and always in original bindings. This, of course, is not practical for the vast majority of book collectors, and the advice here is to only collect the books in which you are specifically interested to begin with. As the need or inclination arises, it will be possible to expand a collection.
I know many collectors who began by putting together titles which have been issued in one or more of the publishers' series. The most obvious, and still relatively readily available, is the John Murray Uniform Edition. John Murray took over Smith, Elder & Company's titles in 1917, and for a number of years published the then-available Conan Doyle titles in a number of differing formats: cheap editions, pocket editions, thin-paper editions, etc. In the late 1920s they began their Uniform Edition series, each title being issued in a plain red cloth cover, crown 8vo sized, with a facsimile Conan Doyle signature on the front board in black, the spine titles and imprints also being in black. Each volume was released with a white dust jacket printed with a colour illustration of the front and titled appropriately, with the series title (Conan Doyle Uniform Edition) printed on both the spine and front of the jacket. The running series title was dropped in the late 1950s when the design of the jackets was modernised-the jackets were also laminated from this point onwards, but the original artwork was retained until the whole series was dropped from Murray's list quite recently. Most of Conan Doyle's major fictional works were issued in this series, and a complete run with jackets makes a most attractive set. A word of caution here: I would only recommend collecting this set in good collector's condition and in jacket. The basic tenets which apply when collecting anything should always be adhered to: collect because you want to-for the fun of it, if you like but always have any possible long-term financial value in mind. The John Murray Uniform Edition has no real value in poor condition and/or without the original dust jackets as issued, and I cannot see this changing in the near future.
Smith, Elder & Company published a number of Conan Doyle's books, in both first and later editions, from 1891 onwards until their demise and take-over by Murray in 1917. The first title they published was The White Company (1891). This was Conan Doyle's eighth book to be published and is one of the two fiction titles issued in a three-decker format. The other three-decker was The Refugees (Longmans, Green & Co, 1893). There are two other very important titles which were issued as three-deckers and which involve Conan Doyle: Dreamland and Ghostland, an anthology of ghost stories published by George Redway in 1887, and The Fate of Fenella (Hutchinson & Co., 1892). The latter is a collaboration of twenty-four authors writing one book between them. Both books are extremely difficult to find in any edition, even later single volumes, and they rank as highly desirable and therefore very expensive items.
Smith, Elder also issued the first editions of Rodney Stone (1896), Uncle Bernac (1897), The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898), and so on, and continued issuing reprints in a wide variety of formats until Murray took them over. Murray continued reprinting ACD titles in a series of cheap editions until they settled on the Uniform Edition. Murray did handle some of Conan Doyle's books in first edition, the best known being Holmes titles (His Last Bow in 1917 and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in 1927), but they also issued Danger! and Other Stories (1918) and The Maracot Deep and Other Stories (1929).
Conan Doyle was active, both in reprint and via new works, from 1879 until his death in 1930. Within this time span he wrote upon an amazingly diverse range of subjects and themes, which I would break down into the following categories:
FICTION: Historical; Contemporary (romances and adventures); Science Fiction (short stories with gothic and horror settings, the Professor Challenger series); Detective Fiction (the Sherlock Holmes series).
MILITARY: Lengthy histories of both the Boer War and a six-volume history of the campaigns in France and Flanders during the Great War. He also wrote propaganda pamphlets for both conflicts.
POETRY: A wide range on all subjects, published in many mediums, separately and in book form.
SPIRITUALISM: Many books and pamphlets, propaganda pamphlets, a two-volume history of the subject and, at one time, a newsletter.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: In a fictionalised format, The Stark Munro Letters; his autobiography Memories and Adventures, many other shorter articles in magazines. His Through the Magic Door, a collection of essays on great writers, could properly be placed in this category as he is presenting a personal viewpoint. Three of Them could also be grouped here, as this little book was based around the three children of his second marriage.
MISCELLANEOUS: A massive grouping for works as varied as Irish Home Rule, Divorce Law Reform, miscarriages of justice, and the atrocities in the Belgian Congo.
I would always advise buying a first, or early, edition of any of Conan Doyle's books if this is at all possible: there is something undefinably pleasurable in handling a first printing of any author. With this in mind, I would always advise dealing with an expert. First editions are naturally more expensive than modern reprints, and mistakes can be very costly. To give an example of what I mean: I was once offered a first edition of The Lost World in fine condition (a very difficult book to find in this state for a number of reasons) for £50. I paid in advance, as requested, but when the book arrived I saw at once that it was a cheap pocket edition reprint from the 1920s. Luckily, I knew what it was as soon as I had unwrapped it and I sent it back, stopped the cheque, and wrote a suitably worded letter to the bookseller concerned. My experience raises two points: firstly, the bookseller had absolutely no right in claiming the book to be a first edition unless he was certain of it by doing his homework; secondly, and far more importantly to my mind, is that I may have been a novice collector who thought he had bought the genuine article. It could have been a long time before the mistake was discovered-and by then it would have been far too late to do anything about it.
My advice is that, before sending any money for a book, one should always try to check the facts available from the book description with a decent bibliography (if you do not own one, a good main or central library should have a copy). When the book arrives, check it over very carefully, especially the plates and preliminary pages. It is not unknown for a book to be sold with plates or blanks missing through a book not having been collated before sending off-to my shame I have made the mistake of sending out an unchecked book, only to have it returned with a letter of complaint. If the book does arrive, and is found to be incorrectly described, you are quite within your rights to return it for a full refund plus postage costs. A good bookseller will always comply as a matter of course. Normally, of course, booksellers do not usually try to sell reprints as first editions: they may well just not have the necessary specialised information to hand, a problem encountered by many general dealers.
The classic mistake with Conan Doyle's books concerns Danger! and Other Stories — and I have seen this happen with dealers who really should have known better. Danger! was issued by John Murray in 1918 in a deep pink diaper-grain cloth, titled in gilt on the spine and blind on the front cover. It was not a particularly successful book, and a large number of the unbound sheets was re-issued in 1929 in a far more attractive brown cloth binding, titled in black. The rebound and reissued sheets retained the original title-page, which had the first edition publication year of 1918 printed on them. Without careful examination, a knowledge of the priority of Conan Doyle's works, and the fact that the 'brown' edition is a more attractive book, the mistake is often made of claiming the 'brown' edition, with the appropriate price mark, as a first edition. It is, to give it its correct classification, a 'first edition-second issue or later' (there are variants even in the 'brown' edition).
I have deliberately avoided giving prices of any of the books mentioned. It would be a quite useless exercise, as by the time this article appears the prices may well have changed one way or the other. As a general rule of thumb, though, (and bear in mind that this is a general and very flexible rule), first editions are more expensive than reprints. There is a considerable dropping off in value even between first and second editions. Most importantly, condition is absolutely everything. A fine copy of a reprint can be more valuable than a poor first edition. If one is putting together a Conan Doyle collection, unless the interest is only in having working or reading copies for research/reading purposes, it makes sense for the collection to be as attractive as possible. After all, you do have to live with the books, and there is nothing more irritating than to keep seeing an ugly book on the shelf. The eye is continually drawn to the offending volume, which will almost certainly drag down the appearance of its neighbours. Most collectors will want to have a copy, however bad, of a specific text, and will upgrade as soon as funds permit or a better copy becomes available. It is just not possible to buy a superb copy of a wanted book each and every time of asking. A lot of time and money can be saved by buying a decent copy first time-one that you will be happy with until the gem turns up.
Areas of Conan Doyle's writing that tend to be overlooked by many collectors are his propaganda pamphlets and leaflets of all sorts and his Spiritualist works. The first area is ignored because so little becomes available on the open market, and what does is so highly collected by those in the know that the general lack of knowledge of the items is undeveloped. In instances like this a bibliography of any sort comes into its own, as the bibliography highlights the titles which may be available. The second area is Conan Doyle's Spiritualist interest, which forms a very large segment of his total output. Only recently has more attention been paid to this area. Whatever one's views on Spiritualism, the important point to make is that to understand the man fully, the overwhelming interest of his later and mature years cannot be ignored.
His first book on the subject, The New Revelation, was issued in 1918 and from that year onwards he produced almost a book each year — and sometimes two-on the subject. Conan Doyle always considered his most important book to be his two-volume work The History of Spiritualism (1926). He thought that if anything would survive him, or keep his name remembered after his death, this book would. During the last and important stage of his life, Conan Doyle wrote more than a dozen books, and at least as many pamphlets and booklets, on the subject of Spiritualism, including his famous fairy book The Coming of the Fairies (1922). A copy of this, complete with a full set of the Cottingley fairy photographs, has been a collector's item for many years, especially the second and enlarged edition of 1928 which has extra photographs not included in the original edition.
Conan Doyle also wrote many pamphlets and leaflets expounding the allies' cause, both before and during the Great War, and collecting these obscure and difficult to find pieces can make a fascinating adjunct to a more formally based collection. The early years of the century, up until the start of the Great War, saw the peak of his propaganda writing, with items on subjects as diverse as Tariff Reform, Divorce Law Reform, Irish Home Rule, the cases of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, and the atrocities in the Belgian Congo. A complete collection of the pamphlets would be almost impossible to form now--and would certainly cost a small fortune. Some of the pamphlets have neither been seen nor offered for sale for a great number of years.
One further interesting and relatively inexpensive method of collecting Conan Doyle is to put together those of his works published by Bernhard Tauchnitz of Leipzig. Tauchnitz editions were offered for sale only on the continent, mainly at railway stations, and were published in English. The commonest bindings to be found are the paper-covered issues, but there were also special bindings in cloth, suede and leather. Many of the original issues which were brought back into the U.K. were rebound into hard covers, and because of this it can be quite difficult to date them accurately. The original paper covers had the current issues listed on the covers, and from this information the book in question could be placed as a first issue or reprint. Many of Conan Doyle's titles were issued in two volumes-and it can be quite maddening to find just one volume of a pair. Trying to match the odd volume can be most frustrating and is really not to be advised. Checking my bibliography I see that over thirty of Conan Doyle's fiction titles, plus a couple of others, were issued by Tauchnitz-so a very reasonable collection could be put together in this way. Some are very difficult to find, however, and although the majority were issued by Tauchnitz in the same year as the first U.K. edition, some were not. The Mystery of Cloomber (1888) was Conan Doyle's second book to be published, but it was not issued by Tauchnitz until 1909. Even a comparatively simple method of collecting can have its pitfalls for the unwary.
And so to summarise: collect Conan Doyle if the man fascinates or interests you, or if you just want a good read. Start, if you wish to begin slowly, by putting together the titles you need in one of the 'cheap' editions. Collect only the titles you want to have at first, and then expand as your interest deepens into subjects of which you had perhaps been unaware. If at all possible, buy the best and earliest edition available — at least buy a copy that you can live with. Try always to deal with someone you know and trust, and who will give you as much help as possible. Collect because you want to collect, but be practical as well. Book collecting is a highly infectious disease, but is great fun and immensely satisfying.
This article only scratches the surface of the subject of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his writings. Each area or topic could well form the subject of a long article. I have no doubt that future issues of ACD will, in one form or another, do just that.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
