The Sign of Four (Broadview Editions) - Softcover

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551118378 ISBN 13: 9781551118376

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2010

Synopsis

Gripping and ingeniously plotted, this Sherlock Holmes novel is also an important document of late-Victorian imperialism. Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan, a beautiful young woman enlisting the help of Holmes to find her vanished father and solve the mystery of her receipt of a perfect pearl on the same date each year, it gradually uncovers a tale of treachery and human greed. The action audaciously ranges from penal settlements on the Andaman Islands to the suburban comfort of South London, and from the opium-fuelled violence of Agra Fort during the Indian 'Mutiny' to the cocaine-induced contemplation of Holmes' own Baker Street. This edition places Doyle's tale in the cultural, political, and social contexts of late nineteenth-century colonialism and imperialism. The appendices provide a wealth of relevant extracts from hard-to-find sources, ranging from official reports to memoirs, and newspaper editorials to anthropological studies.

About this title

Review:

In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of 'British' fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best. --Antoinette Burton

Perhaps the greatest of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries is this: that when we talk of him we invariably fall into the fancy of his existence. --T. S. Eliot

Book Description:

Emmy award-winning actor Sir Derek Jacobi reads this full-length story featuring Holmes and Watson.

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1551118378
• ISBN 13: 9781551118376
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 275
• Editor: Shafquat Towheed