Review:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections/Christopher Roden
This review of the book "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections", by Harold Orel was written by Christopher Roden and published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 2, No. 2) in autumn 1991.
This review evaluates Harold Orel's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Interviews and Recollections, a scholarly compilation of contemporary interviews and memoirs that illuminate Conan Doyle's life, career, and public reputation. While noting minor structural shortcomings and its high price, the reviewer praises the volume as a valuable resource for understanding both the man and his multifaceted legacy.
Review
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections
- Edited by Harold Orel
- Macmillan, 1991; 178pp + xvii; £45.00
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
Many of the interviews with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which were published, either in autobiographies or in now-hard-to-find journals and magazines, have been included in this latest addition to Macmillan's 'Interviews and Recollections' series.
Harold Orel is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas and has published many books on subjects ranging from Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats and Rebecca West, to Irish and Scottish culture, Victorian literary criticism, and the short-story genre. He has been particularly active in the American Committee on Irish Studies and in The Thomas Hardy Society and was the Editor of Rudyard Kipling Interviews and Recollections in the same series as this volume.
'Any review of the first thirty years of Doyle's life and career,' we are told in the introduction, 'depends heavily on what Doyle tells us in a number of interviews and in the opening chapters of Memories and Adventures, his autobiography. Scholarly research into the events of his childhood and young manhood, has intensified in recent years, but the testimony of Doyle's contemporaries is surprisingly thin, and it seems doubtful that even the personal papers of the Doyle Estate, currently unavailable to researchers, can or will add much in the way of either interviews or recollections, so far as these early years are concerned.'
Be that as it may, we nevertheless await with interest the release of the Estate's papers in the hope that they will yield more information regarding Bryan Charles Waller, Charles Altamont Doyle, Conan Doyle's relationship with Doctors Hoare, Budd and Elliot and, of course, the voluminous correspondence between Conan Doyle and his mother. The french edition of Pierre Nordon's biography Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - l'homme et l'oeuvre (Didier, Paris, 1964) is rich in footnotes which quote from Estate documents and heighten the anticipation of new discoveries.
Interviews and Recollections begins with a short resumé of Conan Doyle's life and career and continues in five distinct parts:
- (1) The years at Edinburgh University, 1876-81
- (2) Sherlock Holmes, 1886-1927
- (3) The Professional Writer
- (4) Speaking out on public issues; sports
- (5) Spiritualism.
In a way, it is disappointing that each section is not prefaced by a short introduction of its own, putting the extracts and articles which follow into a more defined perspective. The well-researched notes appended to each 'recollection' are designed to assist and enlighten, but students of Conan Doyle, particularly those who do not have access to all of the biographical material would, no doubt, appreciate additional comment and information.
This shortcoming does not, however, detract from the wealth of information presented in this slim volume. Although there is much which will be familiar, particularly in the extracts drawn from ACD's own autobiographical writings, Professor Orel has made very full use of Green & Gibson's A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle, and this has enabled him to include many pieces which further emphasise just how popular a man Conan Doyle really was.
Sherlockians will enthuse at the variety of information imparted by Coulson Kernahan and Silas Hocking, and an anonymous contribution from The Cincinnati Gazette throws some light on how ACD thought Holmes might have approached an investigation into the Whitechapel murders of Jack The Ripper.
But this book has far more than Holmes to hold our attention as the reminiscences of literary greats such as Bram Stoker, Jerome K. Jerome, J. M. Barrie and Robert Barr demonstrate.
Inevitably, the book concludes with comment on Conan Doyle's spiritualist beliefs and here the contributions range from Harry Houdini to Jean Dorsenne. A good perspective on our subject, and a fine tribute to ACD is achieved in the final paragraph of Ralph D. Blumenfeld's 'The Father of Sherlock Holmes':
- I like to think of this big, burly boy with the inquiring mind, the belief in fairies; the never-tiring searcher and the story-teller. He was a good friend and a fine fighter for right.'
Unfortunately, the high price-tag placed on the book, by virtue of its being produced by an academic publisher, will deter many who would appreciate the opportunity of familiarising themselves with these lesser-known pieces and it is to be hoped that Macmillan recognise the potential for a paperback edition in due course. The fine work which Professor Orel has done is good reason to look forward to his Critical Essays on Conan Doyle which, I understand, will be published by G. K. Hall in America in the near future.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
