FIRST EDITION, half title, toning to front free endpaper, publishers red cloth, gilt title to spine and top board, minor surface dirt, slime a little sunned, slight shelf lean, 6pp. of ads, 8vo, London, John Murray, 1917 Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) famous for his creation of Sherlock Holmes. A prolific writer, his works include detective fiction, fantasy and science fiction, spiritualism, plays, poetry, romance and history. Though not the first fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes is undoubtedly the best known. Conan Doyle attempted to kill his most adored character off in 1893 with ‘The Final Problem’ but due to popular demand he brought him back in ‘The Hound of the Baskerville’ in 1902. The character and stories have had a profound and lasting effect on mystery writing and popular culture as a whole. His Last Bow is a collection of eight Sherlock Holmes stories. Six of the stories were published in The Strand Magazine between September 1908 and December 1913. The final story ‘His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes’, was published in Colliers a month before the book. Many of the stories were later adapted for television and radio.