The Pursuit of the House-Boat

novella

Tweet

For all Sherlock Holmes lovers, we decided to publish this time a novel with Sherlock Holmes written by John Kendrick Bangs, first issued in 1897 by Harper & Brothers. It was also serialised in the famous Harper's Weekly during the same year, between February 6th and April 24th, 1897.

As reported on The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia online, The Pursuit of the House-Boat is a novel dedicated to “A. Conan Doyle, Esq., with the author's sincerest regards and thanks for the untimely demise of his great detective which made these things possible”.

After the House-Boat had been hijacked by Captain Kidd at the end of A House-Boat on the Styx, the various members of its club decided that to track it down, a detective would have to be called in. So they hired Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time of the book's publication, had indeed been declared dead by his creator.

This story is part of the so known Associated Shades series, an exclusive men's club in Hades, whose members are the shades of famous people, including Adam and Baron Munchausen but primarily classical writers: Homer, Confucius, Shakespeare, president Walter Raleigh, Johnson and Boswell, and many others. The series includes four books (A House-Boat on the Styx, 1895, The Pursuit of the House-Boat, 1897, The Enchanted Type-Writer, 1899 and Mr Munchausen,1901. All four books were illustrated by Peter Newell.

John Kendrick Bangs was an American author, humorist, editor and satirist. He was born in Yonker – New York on May 27, 1862, and died on January 21, 1922. Between 1880 and 1883 at Columbia College, he became editor of Columbia's literary magazine, Acta Columbia. Between 1884 and 1888 he became Associate Editor of Life, writing many poems and articles. He also worked for Harper's Magazine, Harper's Bazaar and Harper's Young People, and from 1899 to 1901 served as active editor of Harper's Weekly. From January to November 1899 became editor of the American edition of the Harper-owned Literature. He was also the editor of the New Metropolitan magazine in 1903 and, one year later, he was appointed the editor of the American humour magazine Puck. He married twice and had three sons from the first wife.