The Portsmouth History Centre will soon display a collection of letters written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, on loan from the British Library as part of its “British Library on Tour” programme.
The letters offer a glimpse into Conan Doyle’s life in Portsmouth.
A rare first edition of Beeton’s Christmas Annual, featuring the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, will also be on show.
The Conan Doyle Collection is working with community groups on a project called Sherlock’s Home: Portsmouth Then and Now – funded by the Arts Council. The project will compare Portsmouth and London in the Victorian era, other significant writers of the time and how transportation played a role in the development of written literature.
Alice Zamboni, Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts at the British Library, said: ‘We are excited to continue British Library on Tour and to share the riches of the British Library’s collection far and wide across the UK. Portsmouth played an important role in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s life; it is in this city that he became a published crime fiction writer and developed the character of Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to British Library on Tour, the three Conan Doyle letters on loan from the British Library are now revisiting the place where they were first written.’
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