£145,000 to take one leaf out of Sherlock Holmes original
IT’S just one page and yet it’s expected to fetch as much as £145,000.
The single handwritten paper belongs to the original manuscript of The hound of the Baskervilles, one of the most famous detective stories ever written.
It is being sold at auction in the US, one of only 37 pages to survive out of the 185 on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock holmes adventure.
The murder mystery, published in 1902, was set on Dartmoor and featured the legend of a huge, diabolical hound. It marked the return of holmes and Dr Watson. Conan Doyle had killed off his creation eight years earlier.
Pages of his manuscript were offered to dealers as part of the book’s US publicity campaign.
however, since Doyle wrote on an acidic paper, most have disintegrated. The 37 surviving pages include all of Chapter 11, kept at the New York Public Library.
The 8in by 13in page being sold is headed ‘Chapter XIII, Fixing The Nets’. holmes and Watson discuss a murder on the moor, and whether to apprehend a suspect.
It is being sold by a private collector at heritage Auctions, of Dallas, Texas, on November 6.
A heritage spokesman said: ‘To promote the return of holmes, the American publisher, McClure, Phillips & Company asked Conan Doyle for the original manuscript, and mounted an elaborate publicity campaign by breaking up the pages and offering them to dealers who purchased copies.’