The Hound Of The Baskervilles, et al, Remembered
Posted: Thursday, December 25, 2008
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Memories have a tendency to be pleasant to the average mind. Our minds tend to forget the unpleasant parts of our lives and the parts which were sweetest are often indelibly etched in our memory.
Reading of the old classics tend to give me nostalgia more than anything else, I believe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who authored the Hound Of The Baskervilles comes to my mind and I cannot help but be amazed that those writers of the 18 th and 19 th centuries could produce such classics from folklore and their own imagination. Those books could hold you spellbound without reverting to some man and woman going to bed together every other chapter or so.
The number of classics is almost endless and almost all are on the internet presented in toto. If you came along too late to be required to read many of these old masterpieces in school, let me recommend them to you now. Doyle created three prominent characters for his books, Sherlock Holmes being the most famous and durable. He was featured in four of Doyle's books: A Study In Scarlet, The Sign Of Four, The Valley Of Fear and of, course, The Hound Of Baskervilles. He also wrote six collections of short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes.
His other featured characters who were not nearly as famous and as colorful as Sherlock Holmes, were Professor Challenger and Brigadier Gerard. He also wrote many plays and other stories of fiction.
Of course Arthur Conan Doyle was not the only writer of classics. There was Charles Dickens, with his famous: A Christmas Carol, and also Great Expectations, Tale Of Two Cities, The Chimes and The Cricket On The Hearth.
Then there is Jack London who authored 21 books, not the least of which were: The Call Of The Wild and White Fang. And many, many more.
I urge all who have any interest in these great books to visit: http://www.literature.org/authors/ where you will find thirty nine great authors. Click on your choice of them and a list of their books, stories, etc., will a come up and you can click on your choice there and you'll get a list of that book's chapters. So, go for it.
This Article has been viewed 311 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)I would recommend ending your opening paragraph at "etched in our memory"Thank you for the Classics reference in the last paragraph.The three preceding or two penultimate paragraphs ("Of course Arthur ..." and, "Then there is ..." )could have been eliminated or truncated or used in a separate article.I aspire to become such a prolific writer as you.Thanks for reading and your suggestions Gerry. I definitely need them.
Sherlock Holmes was my favorite. I remember sitting on my Mom's lap & being held spell bound as she read "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". His writing are good for kids of all ages. It's just to bad that more parents don't unplug their TV's & take the time to read to their kids.Thanks for commenting Rich, I agree whole heartedly.
Very informative, I appreciated this article.Thank you Gary, for reading and commenting. I really appreciate your encouragement.
Hi Joe, very well written. Makes me want to read them. A Christmas Carol is one I did read, but some of the others I have never heard of. I'm not much of a Classic reader. I am sure I am missing out on some great stuff!Hi Teresa, I appreciate your comments. Yes you are missing a lot. The old timers could WRITE. From about the time I was twelve or fourteen years old, I read almost incessantly until I was maybe thirty five or forty. And now that I'm retired, I'm pretty much back at it. Only difference, I spent my time reading the Bible and books back then, now I still read the Bible a lot but intstead of other books, it is now mostly articles. I think, if I had not read as much as I did, I would really be a dummy.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.