MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by A. Conan Doyle (1894)

Description: A great second edition of the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes written by A. Conan Doyle. The book measures 7-1/2" x 5" and has some wear which is why I'm pricing it very fairly. I have taken many pictures of the condition on pages. Some of them are tattered and torn, with the worst being the first page. It is stamped "Condemned Feb 27 1905" along with "12917N" handwritten above the controversial paragraph. It was likely condemned which was likely because of the occult and spiritualism references in the book, making this edition rare! I took a picture of page 99 that has the "condemned Feb 27 1905" stamp. This page #99 is part of chapter 17 titled "The Musgrave Ritual" & has a reference to the butler sneaking at night with a candle when he thought all were sleeping, then unlocking a bureau, and reading about the family's "Musgrave Ritual." The owner catches him and fires him. It references the ritual being "nothing of any importance at all, but simply a copy of the questions and answers in a singular old observance called the Musgrave Ritual" It is sort of a ceremony peculiar to our family, which each Musgrave for centuries past has gone through on his coming of age - a thing of private interest, and perhaps of some little importance to the archaeologist, like our own blazonings and charges, but of no practical use whatever." There is also a handwritten with "12917 N" on page 115, but I'm not sure if that's an annotation to another part of the book being banned. The page is also perforated with "Cleveland Public Library" and came from the Andrew Carnegie funded Miles Park Library, which was part of the Cleveland Public Library until 1987 when it was closed. You can look up a picture of this library building online if you're interested. There are some condition issues on this book. I did my best to list them all, but there may be a few pages I missed with small tears or rips. Here are the issues I found: *first page illustration of men struggling on a cliff, *Page 1-2 is torn, and page#2-4 is missing, *Page #6-7 has some rips, *Page #19 has a border piece missing, but text is intact, *Page 34-35 has some tears, but text is intact, Page #43 has a tear, *Illustration between #52-53 is loose and out of the binding, *#54 missing a piece of the border, *#63-64 page missing, *#65-66 loose and out of binding, #75-76 has a piece missing from the border, but all text is intact, *#79-80 has a tear in the upper corner where the page number would be and some text is missing, #91-92 corner is missing, but all text is intact, *#93, #94, #95, #96 pages are missing, #107 bottom corner piece is missing, but all text is intact, #114 page creased in corner, #127 bottom left hand corner piece missing, but text is all intact, #157-158 pages missing, #164-167 tears in bottom of pages, #205 bottom right hand corner missing, #247 upper right hand corner piece missing but all text is intact. This is a rare book as most condemned books were destroyed, so it's a nice addition to the serious collector's archive. Note: I'm always happy to answer questions, so please feel free to ask them. Additional pictures are available upon request for serious inquiries only, please. Thanks for looking! (Inventory Box#: 26 Code: 0000.0024.00012.0008.0005)

Price: 550 USD

Location: Cleveland, Ohio

End Time: 2025-01-21T05:23:39.000Z

Shipping Cost: 9 USD