The novel is described as "a series of reflections and conversations"
The previously
unpublished first novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will finally be available to
buy from Monday.
Entitled The
Narrative of John Smith, the novel - written between 1883 and 1884 - comprises
the reflections of a man confined to his room by gout.
Conan Doyle sent it
to a publisher but it was lost in the post. The book was then reconstructed
from memory.
The British Library
is now releasing the novel, alongside an audiobook read by actor Robert
Lindsay.
The four notebooks
that comprise the manuscript form part of an exhibition that runs at the
Library until 5 January.
"This
publication and exhibition show that there are still new things to discover
about this iconic literary figure," said Rachel Foss, who co-edited the
novel.
"It's a
testament to the richness of Conan Doyle's life and the archive he left behind
him... that we can still unearth such little-known gems."
The novel has been
part of the Library's collection since 2007 and is being published with the
consent of the Conan Doyle literary estate.
The author continued
to revise the text and drew on passages from it in his later writings but he
never re-submitted the novel for publication.
"My shock at
its disappearance would be as nothing to my horror if it were suddenly to
appear again - in print," he once joked.
According to Jon
Lellenberg of the Conan Doyle Estate, the author was "fortunate" that
his first stab at penning a novel went unpublished in the 1880s.
Even so, he
continued, the text offered "a unique window into the mind, thinking and
often emphatic opinions" of the Sherlock Holmes creator.
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