A. CONAN DOYLE

A NEAR FINE and SUPERIOR HOUND

Doyle, [Arthur] Conan. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. London: Newnes, 1902. First Edition. Original red pictorial cloth, titles and decoration in gilt and black. Sixteen full page black-and-white plates by Sidney Paget. A NEAR FINE copy, not just clean and bright but also still retaining the original roundness of the spine with barely a touch of the usual heavy fade. Despite some trivial wear to the spine edges including one tiny pinprick hole, a little bubbling to the upper cover, and a touch of soil: this is a superior and special example of the first edition worthy of the grade. Internally the pages are fresh and unfoxed, the hinges all-original and tight, a small neat bookplate sits in the top corner of the front paste-down. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES is inarguably the most celebrated of the four Sherlock Holmes novels and, although printed in a relatively large edition of 25,000 copies, the physical make up of the book (fragile and easily abused) has guaranteed that almost all surviving copies, after more than a hundred years, have either lost their shape (spines generally squashed flat and square) and their freshness (red of the cloth and gilt of the spine generally worse for wear). This copy is, as advertised, a superior and desirable example. Green & Gibson A26a. SOLD