Playing with FireThe Weird Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle
Tales of weird and supernatural suspense from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author best known for the creation of the illustrious detective Sherlock Holmes. The next addition to the Hardback Classics series, with previous titles collecting the works of Sheridan le Fanu, Margaret Oliphant and M.R. James. The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table and wavered and flickered across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and glowed, hardening down into a shining core… Although best known for the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a remarkable number of weird and supernatural tales. Pulling at this thread of his fiction reveals a writer deeply fascinated in matters of the occult, the uncanny and the unexplainable, with his belief in spiritualism later in life only adding to his passion for the unknown. This volume collects Doyle’s most enduring strange stories – ranging from monster encounters and deadly hauntings to dark tales of mesmerism – and also includes a new introduction along with Doyle’s never-before-reprinted essay on his own spiritual experiences, ‘Stranger than Fiction’.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Long before crime fiction became a genre, there was Sherlock Holmes—and behind him, the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: physician, spiritualist, and literary architect of deduction itself. He didn’t just create a detective; he carved out an entire way of thinking, a cold, rational clarity that sliced through Victorian fog like a magnifying glass catching the morning sun.
Born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Doyle was a man of science before he was a man of letters. Trained as a doctor, he brought a clinical precision to his writing that made Holmes’s logic feel almost forensic in an age when forensic science was still in its infancy. The A Study in Scarlet debut in 1887 wasn’t just the birth of a character—it was the birth of modern detective fiction. And yet, Doyle always saw Holmes as a side project. It was his historical novels, like The White Company, that he considered his serious work.
British Library Hardback Classics: Gilded Nightmares
Discover Gilded Nightmares, a hardback collection devoted to gothic and unsettling fiction. These British Library editions explore dark imagination and eerie storytelling through striking design. Created for readers who enjoy classic tales with a darker edge.
British Library Hardback Classics: Gilded Nightmares consists of 18 total books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
