A handwritten draft by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of his 1893 Sherlock Holmes mystery, ‘The Adventures of the Greek Interpreter’, is to be sold at Bonhams Fine Literature sale in New York on April 11 and is estimated at $380,000-420,000.
The storyis one of the 56 short detectivestories written by Conan Doyle about Holmes. It is best known for the first appearance of Holmes’s older brother Mycroft and is among a treasure-trove of Sherlock Holmes’ material included in the sale, artdaily.com reported.
The handwritten manuscript of ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’-estimated at $250,000-350,000- written in 1922 and one of the last Sherlock Homes mysteries is also included in the auction. The story is notable for its reference to Dr. Watson’s tin box, kept safe in a bank vault and crammed with notes on Holmes’s cases.
Also available in the sale is a handwritten page from probably the most famous Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, which marked the return of the detective in 1901/2 after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls.
One of the Few
As a publicity stunt, individual pages from the original manuscript were distributed to book shops in the US. Inevitably, many were lost or stolen and the surviving pages are scarce and much prized. This page is valuable because it is one of the few of the remaining sheets that feature Holmes and Watson discussing the case. It is estimated at $100,000-150,000.
The sale also features a reminder of Doyle’s other career as a writer of romantic historical novels, in the handwritten 561-page manuscript of ‘Rodney Stone: a Reminiscence of the Ring’. Written in 1895, and set in 1851, the work brings together Rodney, sent to London to acquire the ways of a man-about-town, and his childhood friend, aspiring bare knuckle fighter Boy Jim, to solve a murder mystery. The estimate is $80,000-100,000.
