The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly (Volume XVIII, July to December 1899)

Single bound volume containing all six issues of The Strand Magazine issued in the second half of 1899.  Blue cloth boards with extensive black stamped illustration and lettering, some gilded embellishments on spine.  Boards have bevelled edges.  Think 8vo.  Boards are heavily worn and rubbed at corners and spine ends, somewhat discoloured with handling and sunned and faded over spine (making the titling dull).  Text block edges tanned all round.  Some foxing and soiling in margins of endpapers, Some minor signs of handling internally to pages but generally neat and clean. Tight, robust binding, remaining square and firm.

The Strand Magazine ran monthly from 1891 to 1950, featuring short stories, serial novels and general interest articles and using the slogan ‘picture on every page’.  It is best remembered for first publishing many of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories but other popular writers and illustrators  (Agatha Christie, H G Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, H P Millar, Sidney Paget, Warwick Goble, etc) also contributed over the years.  Authors featuring in this particular volume include E Nesbit (The Island of the Nine Whirlpools; Where You Want to Go); W W Jacobs’ L T Meade and Robert Eustace (parts of Tales of the Sanctuary Club); John Oxenham (The Bishop and the Boy) and Fred M White, a writer of apocalyptic and disaster fiction.  The complete The Croxley Master, Conan Doyle’s masterly boxing novel, appears across the October to December issues.