Lost Arthur Conan Doyle Novel to be Published

A lost novel from Arthur Conan Doyle -- indeed, his first novel -- will be published more than 125 years after it was written. Titled The Narrative of John Smith, is tells the story of a 50-year-old man confined to his room by gout, espousing on all sorts of subjects in conversations with his visitors.

"[Arthur Conan Doyle] wrote it in 1883 and 1884, when he was starting to try to establish himself in the medical profession and as a writer," said Rachel Foss of the British Library, which is publishing this book this coming November. "He sent it to a publisher, but it got lost in the post, so he decided to try and redo it from memory. The manuscript we have is the novel as reconstructed from memory, and it stops around chapter six." Though loose in terms of character and plot, Foss adds that it does provide "some hints towards the Sherlock Holmes stories to come ... and represents his first attempt to make the transition from short story writer to novelist."

Conan Doyle had already succeeded in having a number of short stories published in leading magazines of the day, such as Blackwood’s, All the Year Round, London Society, and the Boy’s Own Paper -- but as was the accepted practice of literary journals of the time, his stories had been published anonymously. Thus, Conan Doyle knew that in order to truly establish his name as a writer, he would have to write a novel.

A Study in Scarlet, his first novel to feature Sherlock Holmes, was published several years later in 1887.

(Source: The Guardian.)