The most valuable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle manuscript ever at auction comes up at Sotheby’s in New York next June. The autograph manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of the Four, signed twice and with edits to Americanize the text is estimated at $800,000-$1.2 million. It is offered with a collection of autograph letters between Doyle and J. M Stoddart, the American businessman and editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, who commissioned The Sign of Four. The letters chronicle the progress of the book, including discussion on the title as well as Doyle’s happiness with the printing, in particular the illustration.
Sotheby’s Book Week sale on June 26 will feature as its centerpiece the Library of Dr. Rodney P. Swantko, a significant collection of modern literature encompassing rare examples of the most famous volumes in English and American literature from the past two centuries. The sale offers a remarkable array of over forty rare books and manuscripts encompassing iconic works by, Charles Dickens, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Vladimir Nabokov, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, and Walt Whitman. The Swantko collection also features two extraordinary literary artworks including Sidney Paget’s original drawing for the illustration “The Death of Sherlock Holmes” for the Conan Doyle short story “The Final Problem.”
