Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript - photo 1
Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript - photo 2
Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript - photo 3

Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript

Lot 125
06.10.2022 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 21 420
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 813617
Lot 125 | Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript
Estimate value
$ 12 000 – 18 000
Life on a Greenland Whaler, complete autograph manuscript

Arthur Conan Doyle, c.1896

DOYLE, Arthur Conan (1859-1930). Autograph manuscript signed (“A Conan Doyle”), "Life on a Greenland Whaler, " c.1896.



24 pp., mostly about 168 x 203 mm, essentially quarto sheets separated in half with slight variation in height (some letters grazed, signature a little faded and blotted, some margins irregular, old holes and faint creasing at upper left corners from a binder clip); black ink on lined paper with Doyle's customary sparse revisions, each leaf tipped at left edge to a small quarto sheet, bound with portrait in full black morocco gilt by Stikeman (cover repaired). Provenance: David G. Joyce (his sale, Anderson Galleries, 13 & 14 February 1923, lot 257) – Anderson Galleries, 10 November 1932, lot 34 – Philip M. Neufeld (his sale, Christie's New York, 25 April 1995, lot 135).



Complete autograph manuscript of Doyle's account of his own great adventure, his seven-month voyage as a ship's surgeon on an Arctic seas whaler in 1880. He was only 20 years old and a third-year medical student when he set sail with the SS Hope (he remarks in the text, "I have often thought that it was as well that there was no very serious call upon my services..."). He explains to his reader: "It came about in this way. One raw afternoon in Edinburgh, whilst I was sitting reading hard for one of those examinations which blight the life of a medical student, there entered to me a fellow-student with whom I had some slight acquaintance. The monstrous question which he asked drove all thought of my studies out of my head. 'Would you care,' said he, 'to start next week for a whaling cruise You'll be surgeon, two pound ten a month and three shillings a ton oil money.' 'How do you know I'll get the berth' was my natural question. 'Because I have it myself. I find at this last moment that I can't go, and I want to get a man to take my place.' 'How about an Arctic kit' 'You can have mine.' In an instant the thing was settled, and within a few minutes the current of my life had been deflected into a new channel." The piece first appeared in the Strand Magazine in January 1897 and then in McClure's Magazine March 1897; it was collected in Memories and Adventures, published in 1924. Like most Doyle manuscripts, the present work has sparse revisions and is nearly final.

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