The Ring of Thoth (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of detective Sherlock Holmes, is the father of crime fiction. Originally published in The Cornhill Magazine in 1890, 'The Ring of Thoth' sees an Egyptologist visit the Louvre and witness a strange event. Many of the earliest occult stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781447499701

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. Before starting his writing career, Doyle attended medical school, where he met the professor who would later inspire his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet was Doyle's first novel; he would go on to write more than sixty stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. He died in England in 1930.

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SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. It was between 1876 and 1881, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, that he began writing short stories, and his first piece was published in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. In 1882, Conan Doyle opened an independent medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was here, while waiting for patients, that he turned to writing fiction again, composing his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith.

In 1887, Conan Doyle’s first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. It featured the first appearance of detective Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist who was to eventually make Conan Doyle’s reputation. A prolific writer, Conan Doyle continued to produce a range of fictional works over the following years. In 1893, feeling that the character of Sherlock Holmes was distracting him from his historical novels, he had Holmes apparently plunge to his death in the short story ‘The Final Problem’. However, eight years later, following a public outcry from his readers, Conan Doyle ‘resurrected’ the detective in what is now widely regarded as his magnum opus, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Sherlock Holmes went on to feature in fifty-six short stories and four novels, cementing Conan Doyle’s reputation as probably the most famous crime writer of all time. Aside from his fiction, Conan Doyle was also a passionate political campaigner – a pamphlet he published in 1902, defending the United Kingdom’s much-criticised role in the Boer War, is seen as a major contributor to his receiving of a knighthood in that same year.

In his later years, following the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle became deeply interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, producing several works on the subjects and engaging in a very public friendship and falling out with the American magician Harry Houdini. He died of a heart attack while living in East Sussex in 1930, aged 71.

THE RING OF THOTH

Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F. R. S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a man whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have placed him in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was the victim, however, of

Reviews for The Ring of Thoth (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

[aulsmith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good story with a lot of references to Egyptian based occultism.