AMS signed twice, "A. Conan Doyle," totaling 27 pages, 6.25 x 8, Windlesham, Crowborough, circa 1920/1921. The complete handwritten manuscript of "The Bully of Brocas Court," a work widely considered one of Doyle’s best ghost stories. The macabre tale unites two of the author’s great passions, boxing and Spiritualism, to create the tale of a sinister prize fighter whose physical brutality does not die. The piece begins: "That year — it was in 1878 — the South Midland Yeomanry were out near Luton, and the real question which appealed to every man in the great camp was not how to prepare for a possible European war, but the far more vital one how to get a man who could stand up for ten rounds to Farrier-Sergeant Burton. Slogger Burton was a fine upstanding fourteen stone of bone and brawn, with a smack in either hand which would leave any ordinary mortal senseless. A match must be found for him somewhere or his head would outgrow his dragoon helmet."
The present manuscript contains mostly minor edits, though a handful of pages include more substantial excisions and additions: on page nine, for example, "the man who accosted them" has been replaced with simply "him", and the description of "a surly red face" has been expanded to include "with an ill-fitting lower lip." On page 13, nearly twenty words have been crossed out. Housed in a handsome custom-made quarter morocco clamshell case. Includes a fine, bright copy of the "Strand Magazine" issue of November 1921, in which the story was first published (pp. 380-388). In overall fine condition, with scattered light foxing, predominantly to the first and last pages, and a few creases to the last page.
Provenance: Sotheby’s New York, 10 Dec. 1993, lot 320.
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