A Study Guide for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535837392

Book preview

09

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1901-1902

Introduction

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was published in serialized form from August 1901 to April 1902 in the British magazine the Strand. The novel was wildly popular with the public, which had been waiting for a new Sherlock Holmes story for eight long years. The story's Gothic setting in Dartmoor, England, the murky depths of the Grimpen Mire bog, the supernatural overtones of the spectral hound, and the legend of a curse upon the Baskerville family all combined to make the novel one of the most loved Sherlock Holmes tales of all time. For over one hundred years, the book has never been out of print, and numerous film and stage versions have been produced worldwide.

The book was inspired by Conan Doyle's friend Fletcher Robinson, a Dartmoor native who told the author of the local legend of a huge phantom hound that haunted the foggy moors. Originally, the novel was not a Sherlock Holmes story. Conan Doyle had killed off the Holmes character in The Final Problem seven years earlier, but he decided the case was a perfect match for Holmes and Watson. However, Conan Doyle set the story two years before Holmes's tragic death, thereby frustrating fans who had hoped the detective would be brought back to life. The Hound of the Baskervilles is narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes's faithful sidekick, and is reconstructed from his notes and recollections. The story is unusual in that Watson plays a central role in the plot, while Holmes is off stage for much of the action. The book was illustrated, as were many Holmes tales, by Sidney Paget, whose depictions of the detective and Dr. Watson have become famous in and of themselves. The novel's success indeed prompted Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes for subsequent adventures.

A recent edition of the novel may be found in The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, W. W. Norton, 2006.

Author Biography

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22, 1859. His father was an architect who illustrated magazines and children's books in his spare time; his mother had been educated in France and was a voracious reader. Conan Doyle graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881 with a degree in medicine and received his doctorate from Edinburgh University in 1885. Despite several attempts to establish a medical practice, Conan Doyle was an unsuccessful doctor; in 1891, he gave up the medical profession to concentrate entirely on writing. One of his professors in medical school, Dr. Joseph Bell, was renowned for his ability to make accurate assumptions about people by observation alone. Bell was the inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes, along with C. Auguste Dupin, the inspector created by Edgar Allan Poe in what is commonly regarded as literature's first mystery story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Conan Doyle was an adventurer. Upon receiving his medical degree in 1881, he embarked on a six-month whaling voyage to the Arctic, serving as the ship's doctor. Several years later he sailed to the west coast of Africa, and in 1900 he traveled to South Africa during the Boer War to serve as a physician in a British field hospital. Despite his penchant for adventure and love of sports (he was rumored to have introduced downhill skiing to Switzerland), he was a devoted family man and made his living primarily as a writer.

Following his activities in the Boer War, he returned to London and wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was promptly published in serial form in the Strand from August 1901 to April 1902. That same year he was knighted for having written a propagandist pamphlet supporting the British position in the Boer War. The