Elementary, my dear reader: £9,000 for Sherlock Holmes book
AN OLD unwanted book dumped in a Harrogate charity shop is expected to fetch £9,000 when it goes under the hammer next month.
For the donation is the very first Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which was handed in to Oxfam.
Study in Scarlet is the star item up for auction by Bonhams in Oxford on May 20.
The find is one of a handful of items gathered from Oxfam shops around the country.
Valued at 7,000 to 9,000, the book contains Two Original Plays for Home Performance, in Beeton's Christmas Annual, 28th Season. It has the first printing of the first Sherlock Holmes story with wood-engraved frontispiece and illustrations by DH Friston and WMR Quick (1887).
The author introduces the detective to readers in the story first issued in Samuel Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887.
Other books include a first edition of DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, published by Duckworth in 1913, which could sell for between 300 and 500.
- Politics: Mark Hookham's Westminster blog - 5.33pm
- Castleford RSPB Fairburn Ings: High wire act Swallows’ summer parade
- Worker dies on North Yorkshire Moors Railway
- Video: Restaurant reopens on Leeds Harry Ramsden’s site after £500,000 refit
- Chocolat author will tempt guests at Leeds Big Bookend Festival
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
