The Stark Munro Letters

by James Machin (Editor)

Overview

This is the first scholarly edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s epistolary novel, originally serialised in the Idler, 1894–95, and long out of print. With its first-hand testimony of the life of a doctor at the outset of his career in the late nineteenth century, The Stark Munro Letters will appeal to anyone with an interest in medical history. It is based on his experiences during the eight years he spent as a General Practitioner, before becoming a professional author in 1890. By some way the most autobiographical of Conan Doyle’s novels—written at the height of Holmes’s popularity—it is also the most personal in terms of presenting his worldview during his formative years, including ruminations on moral philosophy, religion, science, and evolutionary theory. Moreover, it is entertaining and incredibly vivid—a contemporary critic described the mercurial Cullingworth as ‘one of the finest characters Dr. Doyle has yet drawn’

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399513937
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2024
Series:	The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

James Machin is an associate researcher at Birkbeck, University of London. His editorial work includes British Weird Tales (Handheld Press, 2020), Faunus: the Decorative Imagination of Arthur Machen (Strange Attractor, 2019), Of Mud and Flame: a Penda’s Fen Sourcebook (Strange Attractor, 2019), a special edition of Textual Practice on weird fiction (31:6, 2017), ’Twixt Dog and Wolf (1901) by C. F. Keary (Valancourt Books, 2017), Arthur Machen’s The Cosy Room and other stories (Tartarus Press, 2016), and co-editing Arthur Machen’s 1890s Notebook (Tartarus Press, 2016). Since 2013 he has been editor and co-editor of Faunus, the journal of the Arthur Machen society, and he has also been an editorial assistant on the Birkbeck journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. He has published work—including a monograph and peer-reviewed essays and chapters—on the Gothic, supernatural, and decadent and fin-de-siècle literature and culture, and in 2017, he undertook a six-month research project on representations of brain surgery in Victorian fiction, with a grant from the Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund.

Table of Contents

General Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology of the Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

Introduction

The Stark Munro Letters

An Essay on the Text

Appendices
Apparatus
Abbreviations
General principles
Emendations and Variations
Explanatory Notes

Editorial Reviews

An impressively responsible scholarly edition of a work which, with its intertwining of medicine, memoir, and malfeasance, is likely to become increasingly important to Victorian Scholars. Machin carefully assembles biographical, cultural, and historical contexts, offering thoughtful discussions of its genre, cultural moment, and position in Conan Doyle's oeuvre.

James Krasner

James Machin has given us the definitive edition of this most personal of Conan Doyle's fictions. His expertly edited and richly annotated volume will be a boon to scholars and a source of pleasure for all readers. Inventive, entertaining, and subtly wise, The Stark Munro Letters is ripe for rediscovery.

Stephen Arata

It is quite clear that The Stark Munro Letters is an indispensable part of Conan Doyle’s output and, as Machin emphasises, he would regularly return to its highly enjoyable read in his later years. Its neglect is both puzzling and sad. This is the first notable reprint since 1982, and its entry into this prestigious series is to be welcomed. James Machin’s Introduction is wide-ranging, informative, readable and largely unencumbered by academic jargon and theory.

Sherlock Holmes Journal - Paul M. Chapman