Hound of the Baskervilles by DOYLE, Arthur Conan - 1902

First Edition ìHoundî in the Original Cloth DOYLE, A[rthur] Conan. PAGET, Sidney, [illustrator]. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. London: George Newnes, 1902. First edition, first issue in book form (first serialized in the Strand Magazine between August 1901 and April 1902), with "you" for "your" on page 13, line 3. Small octavo (7 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches; 184 x 120 mm). [8], 358, [1], [1, blank] pp. With sixteen black and white plates (including frontispiece) by Sidney Paget. Original scarlet cloth decoratively stamped in gilt and black (in a design by Alfred Garth Jones) and lettered in gilt on front cover and decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt on spine. A few old ink sketches to front free endpaper, dated "1902". Overall, a near fine copy. In a custom red cloth slipcase. The Hound of the Baskervilles was based on an idea given to [Doyle] by Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who was a nephew of Sir John Robinson and a correspondent for the Daily Express during the Boer War. The two men struck up a friendship when travelling back on the same ship from Cape Town. They spent four days together on a golfing holiday at Cromer in March 1901, and it was then that Robinson mentioned the legend (possibly of the Black Hound of Hergest associated with the Vaughan family of Hergest Court in Herefordshire). Doyle told his mother: ëFletcher Robinson came here with me and we are going to do a small book together ìThe Hound of the Baskervillesîóa real creeperí...The serial publication was an unprecedented success. It was the only occasion in the magazineís history that a seventh printing was needed to meet the demand, and the queues at the publisherís offices and throughout the country were extraordinaryî (Green and Gibson, p. 130). Green and Gibson A26. HBS 67096. $4,000