Save Big on Sherlock Holmes!
This week, a single sheet of Arthur Conan Doyle's manuscript for the Sherlock Holmes thriller The Hound of the Baskervilles will go up for sale at Christie's auction house with an estimated starting price of US$80,000. The actual sales price will likely exceed that by a significant amount.
[Updated June 23: The manuscript page was sold for US$158,500!]
Conan Doyle's gripping tale of a spectral hound and death on the moor is probably his best known work, and it remains well worth reading today. This is where your library card is going to offer you the deal of the century -- instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars for a single page of this book, you can come to the library and read the entire thing for free.
You can borrow the original work from the library's circulating collections, or try one of the many audio, film and graphic adaptations.
There are even eBook, eAudiobook and eVideo copies available to download on your phone and other devices right now.
Even with all these choices, you may still want to see a manuscript. There is, after all, a certain special thrill about seeing a favorite author's handwriting in person. For this experience you can visit the Toronto Public Library's Arthur Conan Doyle Collection to see a variety of manuscript items including this letter that Conan Doyle wrote to his editor discussing the work he was doing on The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, located on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library also has many first and special editions of Conan Doyle's work. Come in for a visit -- we won't bite!
To read more about the sale of the Hound manuscript page, visit Randall Stock's Best of Sherlock Holmes website.
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