Lost Conan Doyle papers finally found

A lost hoard of personal papers belonging to British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, has been found in London, auction house Christie’s said. The collection contains 3,000 items which went missing during a legal dispute over the writer’s estate following his death in 1930, Christie’s said on Tuesday. It includes personal letters, notes and hand-written manuscripts which illustrate the course of the writer’s creative output. Most have never been published.

The collection, found in the offices of a legal firm in London, will go on display in May before being sold by Christie’s for an estimated US$ 3.6 million. One of the most important items is a sketch for the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in the novel A Study in Scarlet, with the original title A Tangled Skein crossed through.

Jane Flower, a manuscript consultant for Christie’s, said: ‘‘The whereabouts of this material was previously unknown and it is for this reason that no modern day biography of the author exists.’’ Tom Lamb, the head of Christie’s books and manuscripts department, added: ‘‘Opening the dozen or so large cardboard boxes, which had housed the archive since the 1960s, was a spine-tingling moment that I will never forget.’’ —(PTI)