Charity Begins at Holmes

The first printing of the first edition of A Study in Scarlet, the earliest book to contains stories that included Sherlock Holmes, sold today for £15,500, far exceeding sales expectations.

The book had been donated to an Oxfam shop in Harrogate and ended up as part of a sale to raise money for Oxfam’s development, advocacy, and relief work around the world. BBC News reports:

[A] Study in Scarlet, which features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first two Holmes tales, was donated to a Harrogate, North Yorkshire, branch of the charity.

It beat a guide price of £9,000 during an auction of books given to Oxfam stores at Bonhams in Oxford on Tuesday.

A first edition Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets sold for £360. The 97 lots sold for more than £30,000.

A copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings went for £950 but a first edition of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling failed to attract a buyer.

On a completely (sorta) unrelated note, The Independent points out an often neglected--but locally celebrated--connection between Sir Arthur and Portsmouth, England:

Reminders of and shrines to the past are to be found all over the city, including the Royal Garrison Church on Governor’s Green as visited by Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and the imposing masthead of HMS Nelson in dry dock. Yet only relatively recently has the city started to make the most of its part in history as the place that gave birth to Sherlock Holmes, a literary creation who went on to feature in four novels and 56 stories. Now, Sherlock fever is spreading fast.

An impoverished and jobless Conan Doyle first came to Portsmouth on a steamer along the coast from Plymouth. He landed at Clarence Pier, where a seafront arcade now parts people from their loose change. A pink memorial plaque on the side of Bush House on Southsea’s Elm Grove marks the spot where the author introduced his violin-playing sleuth to the public in the first two Sherlock Holmes mysteries, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four.

Holmes fans will find the Independent piece well worth reading: there are some surprises that even experts on the topic of Conan Doyle and his work may not know.