The Valley of Fear. Артур Конан Дойл

      

      THE VALLEY OF FEAR

      Arthur Conan Doyle

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street,

      London SE1 9GF

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2016

      Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section

      Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from

       Collins English Dictionary

      Cover by e-Digital Design

      Cover image: Holmes uses his magnifying glass to help solve the mysterious events at Birlstone, Frank Wiles, The Strand Magazine, 1914 © Mary Evans Picture Library

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008166755

      Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008166762

      Version: 2015-11-24

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

History of Collins

Life & Times

PART 1: THE TRAGEDY OF BIRLSTONE

Chapter 1 - The Warning

Chapter 2 - Sherlock Holmes Discourses

Chapter 3 - The Tragedy of Birlstone

Chapter 4 - Darkness

Chapter 5 - The People of the Drama

       Chapter 6 - A Dawning Light

       Chapter 7 - The Solution

       PART 2: THE SCOWRERS

       Chapter 1 - The Man

       Chapter 2 - The Bodymaster

       Chapter 3 - Lodge 341, Vermissa

       Chapter 4 - The Valley of Fear

       Chapter 5 - The Darkest Hour

       Chapter 6 - Danger

       Chapter 7 - The Trapping of Birdy Edwards

       Epilogue

       Classic Literature: Words and Phrases

       About the Publisher

       History of Collins

      In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

      Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

      Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

      In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

      HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature