As a kid I loved all the Sherlock Holmes stories but it was the irresistibly mysterious novel The Hound of the Baskervilles that captivated me the most. The imagery of that menacing hound and the moors enveloped in mist have stayed with me ever since (although the answer to the whodunnit-style mystery faded in time – conveniently so for later rereadings).
So when I jumped online recently to revisit the novel – it’s now out of copyright and in the public domain – I was sad to discover that none of the free ebook versions contained the illustrations that accompanied the story’s original publication in the pages of The Strand magazine. And what is a Sherlock Holmes story without those black and white, of-the-era illustrations by Sidney Paget?
So I grabbed the text, hunted down the illustrations, used the cover design from the first edition of the book (pictured above – isn’t it grand!) and put it all together at a dedicated URL. Then I sat down with my tablet and happily read the story once more.
You can see the results (and read the story) here – thehoundofthebaskervill.es
Ah, the beauty of the internet. Where you can self-publish an out-of-copyright classic and read it exactly how you want to read it.