The Hound of the Baskervilles 100 Years After: A Review Essay

The Hound of the Baskervilles 100 Years After: A Review Essay Benjamin F. Fisher University of Mississippi The Hound of the Baskervilles Leslie S. Klinger, ed. and annotation. Introduction, Nicholas Meyer Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 2002. The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library The Hound of the Baskervilles: Hunting the Dartmoor Legend Philip Weller, ed. Tiverton: Devon Books, n. d. [2001] The Hound of the Baskervilles Afterword, Anne Perry New York: New American Library, 2001 The Hound of the Baskervilles Christopher Frayling, ed. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001 The Hound of the Baskervilles Foreward, Bruce Brooks New York: Aladdin Books, 2000 The Hound of the Baskervilles Introduction, Laurie R. King. Notes, James Danly New York: Random House, 2002 The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter XI: A Facsimile of the Original Manuscript New York: The Baker Street Irregulars in Cooperation with the New York Public Library-Berg Collection, 2001 Radical Rethinks on Hound and Horse Shirley Purves, ed. London: The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, 2002 THE ALLURE of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous novel has not diminished with time's passage: witness materials examined here, all coinciding with the 2002 centenary of the book. Placing the novel within Gothic tradition, Howard Mumford Jones in 1972 noted that this "popular form of fiction has always traded in love and terror," then asked: 181 ELT 47 : 2 2004 "What is The Hound of the Baskervilles with its mysterious countryhouse , its lonely landscape, and its (apparently) infernal canine but a later version of the terrors of the supernatural and the underworld" (ii)? More recent critics have, implicitly, offered their thoughts about such elements as Jones cites (Christopher Frayling, in particular, paying respects to Gothic elements, with Wilmer Hoerr running a close second in this approach; Manuscript Series, 84), but they have also branched out into analyses of additional thematics in Hound. Since Holmes himself goes tracking, ultimately to demonstrate that the giant black animal is not supernatural, "infernal" though it may be otherwise, and that it serves as the agency of human machinations, recent texts and critical studies might be well worth our own "tracking." Mythology, late-Victorian paranoia concerning hereditary traits or human reversions to primitive, animalistic behavior, as well as mysteries (relating to family identity), marriage questions, and some wry humor accompany detection activities in this fascinating novel. Hound was appearing serially in the Strand Magazine (August 1901-April 1902); it was issued in hardcover by George Newnes, publisher of Strand, in England (25 March 1902); and, after a run in the American Strand (September 1901-May 1902), it was published by McClure, Phillips & Co. in the U. S. A. (15 April 1902). Some version of this novel has been kept in print for a century, a record seldom matched by other books from its era (two notable exceptions being The Red Badge of Courage and A Shropshire Lad). Hound readers have preferred one text or another, as representative recent editions reveal. In the absence of a complete manuscript, and because the two serial and two first book versions show slight variances, any attempt to establish a single authoritative text becomes debatable, although that in the Complete Sherlock Holmes Long Stories (1929), the last to pass under Conan Doyle's own eyes, is often followed in reprints. Perhaps the most unusual recent text is that prepared by Klinger, who follows 1929 in the main, but who sometimes draws on Strand and McClure, Phillips (as notes indicate). At least Klinger acknowledges the eclecticism in his text. Christopher Frayling in the Penguin Classics edition (2001) follows Newnes (1902), cites variants from Strand and McClure, Phillips, and notes that Conan Doyle's hasty composition may account for some oddities in Strand. Weiler employs Strand, "warts and all" (18), with textual notes for variants. No information about copy-text for Signet makes one wonder what principles inhere. In places it follows Strand; at others it seems to follow a different version, without explana182 FISHER : A REVIEW ESSAY tion (the "Dedication" to Robinson follows McClure, Phillips). In the opening of chapter 1, we read that Holmes "was up all night," as in Strand (other versions = "stayed up all night"), but later we find readings not in Strand. Modern Library (Chapter...