"Holmes, This is Amazing", Essays in Unorthodox Research (Signed copy)
Signed by Roger Lancelyn Green to Morton N Cohen
Author
Publisher
Printing Details
First edition, limited to 250 copies (this being no 8). Hardback in dustwrapper.21.5 × 16cm, 67pp.
This copy has been signed twice by Roger Lancelyn Green. Firstly to the limitation page, and secondly with a warm personal inscription to Morton N Cohen, the Lewis Carroll and Victorian literature scholar, to the ffep, "For Morton N Cohen, more closely associated with orthodox research, but nonetheless expert in the doings of Sherlock Holmes, The Wrong Box, Stalky, Mowgli, Allan Quartemain—but not Tarzan of the Apes. From his friend and collaborator, Roger Lancelyn Green, May 1975". This is an important book in the literary friendship between Morton Cohen and Roger Lancelyn Green, Roger was already an established author on Lewis Carroll, publishing The Story of Lewis Carroll in 1949 and then at the request of Carroll's family, he edited the Carroll diaries. Morton Cohen has written a biography of Rider Haggard (the author reference in the first part of the dedication), and he was to later edit Lewis Carroll's letters, with the assistance of Roger.
"Many volumes have been written about the life and doings of Sherlock Holmes, since Ronald Knox and Dorothy Sayers first popularised this fascinating recreation—unorthodox research. But there is always something new to be discovered about the greatest of all detectives, and Roger Lancelyn Green here presents several fresh and amazing revelations, all securely based on the published evidence: definite proof as to Holmes's career at university; why he was never called in to solve the nefarious exploits of Raffles the Amateur Cracksman; a consideration of how Dr Watson may have supplied Conan Doyle with unreported cases for use in the stories not apparently concerned with the great detective; what Holmes may have learnt from accounts of contemporary cases of other detectives, and from his earliest critics, and many more such novel additions to Holmesian scholarship.
But although half the book is given up, most properly, to Sherlock Holmes, the author goes on to demonstrate that equally interesting and entertaining investigations can be made of his contemporaries in fiction; the date and order of Allan Quartermain's adventures; Mowgli's Jungle; Stalky's Schooldays; several curious facts and suggestions about the incidents described in The Wrong Box, and, most peculiar of all, the vexed question of the life-span of Tarzan of the Apes".
Roger Lancelyn Green (1918–1987) was a biographer and author, and part of the Inklings, the Oxford literary discussion group which included C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. He was instrumental in persuading C S Lewis to publish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Condition
The book is in very good condition, with some light tanning to the endpapers. The dustwrapper is in good order, a little rubbed to the edges and with a small closed tear to the top of spine at the front joint.
Price
£120.00
