Customer Reviews (2)

Mysterious & startling images by Arthur Conan Doyle's father
Just leafing through these pages reveals a fascinating worldview, one informed by the fantastic, the sentimental, and sometimes even the surreal. The creative artist here is Arthur Conan Doyle's father, an illustrator of some note, relegated to shamed shadows in family memory -- but why?

The answer, at least as interpreted by the editor of this facsimile volume, is alcoholism. It's nothing so shameful now, of course; but to the Victorian world, it was a moral failing, rather than a physical/psychological disease. So the elder Doyle's life was shrouded in the vague diagnosis of "weakness," which was never quite spelled out in blunt terms.

But setting that aside, we still have this remarkable sketchbook, filled with often hallucinatory imagery. Was all of it merely a result of a mind muddled by too much drinking? I don't think so. True, the pictures here are often unwittingly revealing of their creator's moods & mindscape -- sometimes you get the feeling Doyle was drawing what he saw in the throes of delirium tremens.

Still, there's something more here -- a witty, bemused, amazed depiction of a world in which wonders mingle with the everyday, a world where barriers between the two are uncertain at best, shading into one another. One watercolor, for example, shows us a Victorian infant cradled in the arms of a huge brown-red squirrel. Doyle's caption? "Either this is a precious small Babe, or a monstrous big Squirrel."

So we see Victorian fairies & infants in all their innocent sweetness, juxtaposed with a strange world of Nature, often garnished with symbolic figures of Death & Mystery. It's a disorienting world, where the sugary clichés of the era suddenly open into a capricious wonderland. And it's a reminder that beneath the most ordinary, even banal surface, something extraordinary may be lurking. Highly recommended!

Arthur Conan Doyle's Father, Charles A. Doyle...1889 Sketch Book
Thirty years ago a sketch book of jottings, notes and drawings by Charles A. Doyle was found. It is a journal of his day to day life in an insane asylum to prove he was not insane.The sketches are wonderful and stand alone as they depict the life of a man who is bewildered by his time in an asylum. Not much was ever known about Charles as an artist, even though his brother Richard "Dickie" Doyle was a successful Victorian illustrator.
This is a book to enjoy over and over. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: London : Hogg and sonsSubjects: More, Hannah, 1745-1833HannahmorianaNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more