The Captain of the Polestar

by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1stworld Library (Editor)

Overview

About the Author-Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste.He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.-Wikipedia

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595404084
Publisher:	1st World Library
Publication date:	09/01/2004
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

The life of Arthur Conan Doyle illustrates the excitement and diversity of the Victorian age unlike that of any other single figure of the period. At different points in his life he was a surgeon on a whaling ship; a GP; an apprentice eye-surgeon; an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate (twice); a multi-talented sportsman; one of the inventors of cross-country skiing in Switzerland; a formidable public speaker; a campaigner against miscarriages of justice; a military strategist; a writer in a range of forms; and the head of an extraordinary family. In his autobiography, he wrote: 'I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded.' He was not wrong. But Conan Doyle was also a Victorian with a twist, a man of tensions and contradictions. He was fascinated by travel, exploration, and invention, indeed all things modern and technological; yet at the same time he was also very traditional, voicing support for values such as chivalry, duty, constancy, and honour. By the time of his death in July 1930 he was a celebrity, achieving worldwide fame and notoriety for his creation of the rationalist, scientific super-detective Sherlock Holmes; yet at the same time his later decades were taken up with his advocacy of the new religion of Spiritualism, in which he was a devoted believer.

Date of Birth:

May 22, 1859

Date of Death:

July 7, 1930

Place of Birth:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Place of Death:

Crowborough, Sussex, England

Education:

Edinburgh University, B.M., 1881; M.D., 1885

Editorial Reviews

The Captain of the "Pole-Star": Weird and Imaginative Fiction, edited by Christopher and Barbara Roden, shows that, at least literarily speaking, the supernatural was not an entirely new phase in Conan Doyle's development. Here are ghost stories, science fiction and horror stories, including the title piece, about a voyage to the far north on a boat captained by a man with "a curious way of twitching his limbs." It doesn't take long for the narrator to note in his journal, "My deliberate opinion is that we are commanded by a madman."
— The Washington Post

Dennis Drabelle