The Great Shadow: Arthur Conan Doyle, Brigadier Gerard and Napoleon

Throughout the nineteenth century, the great shadow of Napoleon hovered over Europe, and the character of Napoleon was to influence many writers of the timenone more so than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle read widely on the Napoleonic era, eventually producing his own contributions to the steadily growing body of literature on The Great Shadow’. In particular, he developed the character of Brigadier Gerard to run through a series of stories in The Strand Magazine’ after Sherlock Holmes had been killed off’ in 1893. In this study, Clifford S. Goldfarb discusses all of Conan Doyle’s Napoleonic fiction: The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard’, Adventures of Gerard’, two short stories, The Marriage of the Brigadier’ and A Straggler of ’15’ (later adapted for the play Waterloo’, so loved by Sir Henry Irving); and the novels Rodney Stone’, Uncle Bernac’, and The Great Shadow’. Brigadier Gerard has languished in the shadow of Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes for too long. This study will help him leave that shadow, and establish himself as a character as much worthy of study as Sherlock Holmes himself. This is the only edition of the book available, and replaces and edition previously advertised by Simon & Pierre.