Tag: publishing date

Calendar: December 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of December

The Painted Wall

December 1, 1887 marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in print.

The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes was in the detective novel “A Study in Scarlet” written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It appeared in the magazine “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” on December 1st of 1887, published by Ward Lock and Company of London. Although Sir Conan Doyle wrote fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, “A Study in Scarlet” is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon.

Sir Conan Doyle, a general practice doctor,  wrote “A Study in Scarlet” at the age of twenty-seven in less than three weeks. The novel was originally entitled “A Tangled Skein” but changed for publication in the Christmas Annual. Doyle received twenty-five pounds for the novel, but no royalties.

“A Study in Scarlet” begins with a heading which establishes the role of Dr. John Watson as narrator, setting up the point that the work to follow is not fiction but fact, being a reminiscence of Dr. Watson. The novel introduces Holmes to Watson, establishes their friendship, and brings in the character of Inspector Lestrade. It is also the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool.

There are only eleven complete copies of the 1887 “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” known to exist; each now having considerable value. Ward Lock and Company published “A Study in Scarlet in a book form in July of 1888 with featured illustrations by Charles Doyle, Conan’s father. A second edition was published in the following year, this time illustrated by George Hutchinson. In 1890 the first American version was published by Philadelphia-based J.B. Lippincott and Company.

As the first Sherlock Holmes story published, “A Study in Scarlet” was among the first to be adapted to the screen. In 1914, Conan Doyle authorized a silent film to be produced by G. B. Samuelson. Holmes was played by James Bragington, an accountant who worked as an actor for the only time of his life. He was hired for his resemblance to Holmes, as presented in the sketches originally published with the story. Due to the nature of film at that time and the rarity of archiving, it is now a lost film. The success of the film allowed for a second version to be produced that same year by Francis Ford, which has also been lost.

The novel “A Study in Scarlet” has rarely been adapted in full: the 1933 film entitled “A Study in Scarlet” with Reginald Owen actually bears no plot relation to the novel. The most notable instance closest to the novel is the episode in the second season of the BBC television series “Sherlock Holmes” with Peter Cushing as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Dr. Watson, which put more detail into the screenplay.

Bottom Insert Image: Sidney Paget, “Holmes Gives Me a Sketch of the Events”, 1892, Illustration for “Silver Blaze”, Strand Magazine, December, 1892, Private Collection

Calendar: March 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of March

Hot Water with Bubbles

On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly” is published as a book.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist. Her book featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. Stowe was inspired to write this anti-slavery book by the narrative story of Josiah Henson, a formerly enslaved black man who escaped slavery in Maryland by fleeing to Ontario, Canada. There he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient; and there he wrote his memoirs. In 1853 Stowe acknowledged that Henson’s writings inspired “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

Because of the story’s popularity when it appeared as a serial in ‘The National Era”, an abolitionist periodical, the publisher John P. Jewett contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book. Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3000 copies on that day alone, and sold out its complete print run. A number of other editions were soon printed including a deluxe edition in 1853 with illustrations by the artist Hammatt Billings. In the first year of publication, 300,000 copies of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were sold.

The book was translated into all major languages, and in the United States it became the second best-selling book after the Bible. A number of the early editions carried an introduction by Reverend James Sherman, a Congregational minister in London noted for his abolitionist views. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” sold equally well in Britain, with the first London edition appearing in May 1852 and selling 200,000 copies. In a few years over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain.

In recent years, the negative associations with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a vital anti-slavery tool. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the first widely-read political novel in the United States, was dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other sub-themes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the redeeming possibilities offered by Christianity, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery.

In 1853, Stowe went further in her fight against slavery by publishing “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in which she criticized how the legal system supported slavery and licensed owners’ mistreatment of slaves. Thus, she put more than slavery on trial; she put the law on trial. This continued an important theme of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”- that the shadow of law brooded over the institution of slavery and allowed owners to mistreat slaves and then avoid punishment for their mistreatment.