Details
FREEMAN, R. Austin. The Singing Bone. London: Hodder and Stoughton, [1912].
8o. Original red cloth, black-lettered on front cover, gilt-lettered on spine (spine lightly darkened, slightest wear at extremities). Provenance: W.P. Watt (presentation inscription from the author). -- Anonymous owner (sold California Book Auctions, 19 September 1991, lot 72).
FIRST EDITION, issue with the quotation marks correctly printed on the title-page. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS AGENT on the front free endpaper: "W.P. Watt With all good wishes from R Austin Freeman Feb. 1912" and with a small ink self-caricature. The Singing Bone was Freeman's "second signal contribution to the genre..." in which he invents the "inverted" detective story. In the "inverted" story, the usual procedure is turned on its head, with the reader being a witness to the details of the crime at the beginning. The reader then knows all the facts and the detective knows none; the reader discovers how the detective unravels the mystery. "Dr. Freeman was a courageous craftsman thus to challenge a technique in which deliberately he threw overboard the elements of puzzle, surprise, and suspense; but his dangerous and noble experiment was an historic success" (Queen's Quorum 52). Donaldson 6. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.
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FIRST EDITION, issue with the quotation marks correctly printed on the title-page. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS AGENT on the front free endpaper: "W.P. Watt With all good wishes from R Austin Freeman Feb. 1912" and with a small ink self-caricature. The Singing Bone was Freeman's "second signal contribution to the genre..." in which he invents the "inverted" detective story. In the "inverted" story, the usual procedure is turned on its head, with the reader being a witness to the details of the crime at the beginning. The reader then knows all the facts and the detective knows none; the reader discovers how the detective unravels the mystery. "Dr. Freeman was a courageous craftsman thus to challenge a technique in which deliberately he threw overboard the elements of puzzle, surprise, and suspense; but his dangerous and noble experiment was an historic success" (Queen's Quorum 52). Donaldson 6. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.