Original Sherlock Holmes manuscript could fetch $1.2 million at auction
One summer evening in 1889, Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde sat down for dinner at the Langham Hotel in London with J.M Stoddart, the American businessman and editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.
By the time they left, Wilde had committed to writing “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and Conan Doyle had agreed to write “The Sign of Four,” one of his most famous Sherlock Holmes stories.
Now, Conan Doyle’s letters recounting that fated dinner and his sole handwritten manuscript of “The Sign of Four” are being auctioned by Sotheby’s New York, alongside other literary treasures.
The manuscript alone is expected to fetch up to $1.2 million, given its unique significance and status as the most valuable Conan Doyle item ever offered at auction, a Sotheby’s statement said.
“It’s hard to think of two contemporary authors who might be less similar than Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde,” Selby Kiffer, the auction house’s international senior specialist for books and manuscripts, told CNN.
