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    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    Ebook38 pages37 minutes

    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of detective Sherlock Holmes, is the father of crime fiction. However, he was also an accomplished teller of tales featuring the weird, the supernatural, and the horrific, and 'The Captain of the Pole-Star' is one of the best examples of his weird fiction. Many of the earliest and most interesting vampire stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateDec 3, 2014
    ISBN9781447480037
    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    Author

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. Before starting his writing career, Doyle attended medical school, where he met the professor who would later inspire his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet was Doyle's first novel; he would go on to write more than sixty stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. He died in England in 1930.

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    Reviews for The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      I thought this would be a book of ghost stories after reading the first couple and was disinclined to read it, but bluetyson's review encouraged me onward. While many of the stories are rather predictable, I found that Doyle almost always created a character or situation that kept me reading. If you like good, old-fashioned 19th century stories, give these a try.

    Book preview

    The Captain of the Pole-Star (Fantasy and Horror Classics) - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    Pole-Star

    SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

    Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. It was between 1876 and 1881, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, that he began writing short stories, and his first piece was published in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. In 1882, Conan Doyle opened an independent medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was here, while waiting for patients, that he turned to writing fiction again, composing his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith.

    In 1887, Conan Doyle’s first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. It featured the first appearance of detective Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist who was to eventually make Conan Doyle’s reputation. A prolific writer, Conan Doyle continued to produce a range of fictional works over the following years. In 1893, feeling that the character of Sherlock Holmes was distracting him from his historical novels, he had Holmes apparently plunge to his death in the short story ‘The Final Problem’. However, eight years later, following a public outcry from his readers, Conan Doyle ‘resurrected’ the detective in what is now widely regarded as his magnum opus, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

    Sherlock Holmes went on to feature in fifty-six short stories and four novels, cementing Conan Doyle’s reputation as probably the most famous crime writer of all time. Aside from his fiction, Conan Doyle was also a passionate political campaigner – a pamphlet he published in 1902, defending the United Kingdom’s much-criticised role in the Boer War, is seen as a major contributor to his receiving of a knighthood in that same year.

    In his later years, following the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle became deeply interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, producing several works on the subjects and engaging in a very public friendship and falling out with the American magician Harry Houdini. He died of a heart attack while living in East Sussex in 1930, aged 71.

    THE CAPTAIN

    OF THE POLE-STAR

    [BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE SINGULAR JOURNAL OF

    JOHN M’ALISTER RAY, STUDENT OF MEDICINE.]

    SEPTEMBER II—Lat. 81 degrees 40’ N.; long. 2 degrees E. Still lying-to amid enormous ice fields. The one which stretches away to the north of us, and to which our ice-anchor is attached, cannot be smaller than an English county. To the right and left unbroken sheets extend to the horizon. This morning the mate reported that there were signs of pack ice to the southward. Should this form of sufficient thickness to bar our return, we shall be in a position of danger, as the food, I hear, is already running somewhat short. It is late in the season, and the nights are beginning to reappear.

    This morning I saw a star twinkling just over the fore-yard, the first since the beginning of May. There is considerable discontent among the crew, many of whom are anxious to get back home to be in time for the herring season, when labour always commands a high price upon the Scotch coast. As yet their displeasure is only signified by sullen

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