This volume contains four hard to find and rarely-collected stories by 'Dick Donovan' (JEP Muddock), originally printed in Strand in July, August, September and November 1892, between the 1st and 2nd series of Conan Doyle's adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Also reproduced here is Grant Allen's October 1892 tale, 'The Great Ruby Robbery'. An appreciation of that worthy man, Muddock, for whom the bald term "writer" is wholly inadequate, is included. There are brief sketches of the artists Paul Hardy, who illustrated the Strand Donovan stories, and Sidney Paget, who drew for Grant Allen's yarn, but better known as the accidental illustrator of the Holmes stories (Strand really wanted his brother Walter for that task - see p. 143). The layout of this book differs from that of the original Strand publications, but the typographical conventions of the day have been largely adhered to, even if they look antiquated or simply wrong by today's rules. A few errors have been corrected. Edited by Bruce Durie

Before Sherlock Holmes there was Dick Donovan The first internationally-popular Victorian police detective, Dick Donovan was Glasgow's own protector of the peace. "Dick Donovan" was the pen-name for a hugely successful series of over 200 stories and books written by James Emmerson Preston Muddock. These tales predated in popularity Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes outings, and some were first were published in The Strand Magazine at the same time as the Holmes stories. Dick Donovan achieved an international reputation as the master sleuth, and is reputedly responsible for American detectives being known popularly as "Dicks". The foremost, the original, the genuine, the one, the only Man-Hunter in his earliest cases - now available again, with introductory and biographical material by Dr. Bruce Durie. Warning! Do not allow your children, servants, or elderly relatives of a nervous disposition to read these stirring tales of wrong-doers brought to book! www.brucedurie.co.uk/books

The appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand Magazine in 1891 began a stampede of writers who wanted to emulate, build upon or even satirize Arthur Conan Doyle's work. This book explores the development of detective fiction during the critical period between Conan Doyle's creation of Holmes and the advent of the Golden Age of the detective story during World War I. Both British and American detective writers of the period are surveyed--as well as writers who turned to gentleman burglars and master criminals.

Concentrating on works by authors such as Fergus Hume, Arthur Conan Doyle, Grant Allen, L.T. Meade, and Marie Belloc Lowndes, Christopher Pittard explores the complex relation between the emergence of detective fictions in the 1880s and 1890s and the concept of purity. The centrality of material and moral purity as a theme of the genre, Pittard argues, both reflected and satirised a contemporary discourse of degeneration in which criminality was equated with dirt and disease and where national boundaries were guarded against the threat of the criminal foreigner. Situating his discussion within the ideologies underpinning George Newnes's Strand Magazine as well as a wide range of nonfiction texts, Pittard demonstrates that the genre was a response to the seductive and impure delights associated with sensation and gothic novels. Further, Pittard suggests that criticism of detective fiction has in turn become obsessed with the idea of purity, thus illustrating how a genre concerned with policing the impure itself became subject to the same fear of contamination. Contributing to the richness of Pittard's project are his discussions of the convergence of medical discourse and detective fiction in the 1890s, including the way social protest movements like the antivivisectionist campaigns and medical explorations of criminality raised questions related to moral purity.

It is 1875. Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tom Morris, dominate golf. St Andrews is the best course and the Royal and Ancient is the top club. A Morris may win the Open Championship - again! But, one by one, members of the Morris family die. Enter Captain David McArdle, recently of the Black Watch. Champion or villain? War hero or phoney? Friend of Tom Morris - or his nemesis? And what of the local doctor back just from India? The Superintendent of the lunatic asylum? The irascible Edinburgh professor with an interest in potatoes? Other professional golfers with reputations at stake? The recently-discovered memoirs of Fife's Chief Constable, James Fleming Bremner, shed new light on the deaths. Or were they murders? "Whether your interest is golf, St Andrews, social and military history or just a well-crafted mystery, the first volume in the McArdle series is a cracking good yarn!" by Bruce Durie

Who decides what is right or wrong, ethical or immoral, just or unjust? In the world of crime and spy fiction between 1880 and 1920, the boundaries of the law were blurred and justice called into question humanity's moral code. As fictional detectives mutated into spies near the turn of the century, the waning influence of morality on decision-making signaled a shift in behavior from idealistic principles towards a pragmatic outlook taken in the national interest. Taking a fresh approach to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's popular protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, this book examines how Holmes and his rival maverick literary detectives and spies manipulated the law to deliver a fairer form of justice than that ordained by parliament. Multidisciplinary, this work views detective fiction through the lenses of law, moral philosophy, and history, and incorporates issues of gender, equality, and race. By studying popular publications of the time, it provides a glimpse into public attitudes towards crime and morality and how those shifting opinions helped reconstruct the hero in a new image.

James Mussell reads nineteenth-century scientific debates in light of recent theoretical discussions of scientific writing to propose a new methodology for understanding the periodical press in terms of its movements in time and space. That there is no disjunction between text and object is already recognized in science studies, Mussell argues; however, this principle should also be extended to our understanding of print culture within its cultural context. He provides historical accounts of scientific controversy, documents references to time and space in the periodical press, and follows magazines and journals as they circulate through society to shed new light on the dissemination and distribution of periodicals, authorship and textual authority, and the role of mediation in material culture. Well-known writers like H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle are discovered in new contexts, while other authors, publishers, editors, and scientists are discussed for the first time. Mussell is persuasive in showing how his methodology increases our understanding of the process of transformation and translation that underpins the production of print and informs current debates about the status of digital publication and the preservation of archival material in electronic forms. Adding to the book's usefulness are an extended bibliography and a discussion of recent debates regarding digital publication.