Books

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1890. Very good.. True first edition of the second ever Sherlock Holmes story, in which Watson meets his future wife. Before the famous short stories of Holmes and Watson, Doyle published this second novel in which he begins to imagine a richer, more complex Holmes than in A STUDY IN SCARLET: "You know my methods. Apply them." The history of its conception has become legend in itself. In 1889, LIPPINCOTT's editor Joseph M. Stoddart invited Doyle to dine with him in London along with Oscar Wilde at the Langham Hotel (which would later become a setting in three different Holmes stories). Wilde and Doyle, so very different on the surface, proved an excellent dinner party; Doyle later recalled it as "a golden evening." Stoddart was hoping to entice the authors to write for the Philadelphia-based magazine; after the dinner, Doyle wrote to Stoddart that he had decided "to give Sherlock Holmes of A STUDY IN SCARLET something else to unravel."…

The Sign of Four, also called The Sign of the Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate a complex case involving treasure, murder, and a secret pact among four convicts. The novel is notable for introducing the character of Mary Morstan, Dr. Watson's future wife.