Martin Hewitt, Investigator

London: Ward, Lock & Bowden, Limited, 1895. 2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. London, Ward, Lock & Bowden, Limited, 1895 (second edition)/ 1894. Octavo, [viii], 324, [4] (publisher's catalogue) pages with numerous illustrations by Sidney Paget. Quarter cloth (lettered in gilt) and colour pictorial papered boards; cloth a little rubbed and sunned; boards rubbed along the edges and a little worn at the corners, with the rear panel (an advertisement for 'Larola', a skin tonic) a little tanned and scuffed; ownership details on the front flyleaf; small repair to the rear flyleaf (and some light pencilling to the rear pastedown); four children's transfers and an associated light tidemark on the recto of the frontispiece; acidic text paper tanned; scattered light foxing; trifling signs of use (mainly creases to a few corner tips); a very good copy with the contemporary inkstamp of the Adelaide booksellers Copp & Company on the first page of text. The seven stories in this volume appeared in 'The Strand Magazine' between March and September 1894. They effectively took up where Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' left off after twelve appearances between July 1891 and June 1892. 'Of Doyle's contemporary imitators, the most durable (indeed, the only important one to survive over the ages) is the private investigator, a man of awe-inspiring technical and statistical knowledge, in "Martin Hewitt, Investigator"' (Ellery Queen in 'Queen's Quorum'). Fittingly, Sidney Paget illustrated both series of short stories.