Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Arthur Conan Doyle: A Brief Chronology
• A Note on the Text
• The Sign of Four
• Appendix A: Domestic Context
• Appendix B: Colonial Contexts: Accounts of the Indian “Mutiny,” 1857–58
• Appendix C: Colonial Contexts: The First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars
• Appendix D: Colonial Contexts: The Andaman Islands
• Appendix E: Contemporary Reviews
• Select Bibliography

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a British writer of detective and science fiction. Shafquat Towheed is a Lecturer in English at the Open University, UK.

Reviews

“In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of ‘British’ fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best.” — Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of 'British' fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best." - Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign