Other editions of book The Land of Mist

The Land of Mist is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and her colleague. Heavily influenced by Doyle's growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone's at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism. There is a suggestion in chapter two that the deaths of 'ten million young men' in World War I was by punishment by the Central Intelligence for humanity's laughing at the alleged evidence for life after death. George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle's laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (1859-1930) was a Scottish author. He is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Other works include The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Captain of the Polestar (1890), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Beyond the City (1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), The Great Boer War (1900), The Green Flag (1900), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Lost World (1912).

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (1859-1930) was a Scottish author. He is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Other works include The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Captain of the Polestar (1890), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Beyond the City (1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), The Great Boer War (1900), The Green Flag (1900), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Lost World (1912).

The Land of Mist is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and his old friend Edward Malone. Another friend from The Lost World, Lord John Roxton, is also involved in the novel's second half. Professor Summerlee, who has died of old age around this time, is referred to by the mediums (much to the anger of Professor Challenger). Heavily influenced by Doyle's growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone's at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism. There is a suggestion in chapter two that the deaths of "ten million young men" in World War I was punishment by the "Central Intelligence" for humanity's laughing at the alleged evidence for life after death.

The Land of Mist: In the aftermath of the First World War, which had witnessed global carnage on an unprecedented scale, interest in spiritualism exploded across the entire western community. The intense desire to regain contact with loved ones, slaughtered on European battlefields from 1914-1918, drove otherwise sensible and hard-headed citizens into the hands of mystics, parapsychologists and cunning fraudsters, exploiting and trading in the marketplace of universal grief. They claimed, with varying degrees of plausibility, to be able to restore relationships with brothers, sons and fathers, otherwise lost forever. In that sense Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Land of Mist is a vital social document, exploring the hopes, fears and despair of a generation whose nearest and dearest had been blasted into oblivion by the guns of Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme. The Land of Mist should be seen less as a novel and more as a chronicle of the very real sense of loss suffered by millions and their attempts, at all costs, to compensate and survive. The 'Baby Book' of Denis Stewart Percy Conan Doyle: Diaries vary, of course, in their content, and therefore their interest to other readers, but the genre as a whole should be valued as a unique form of human testament. Small scribbled pages will outlive their author in a way that few ever visualise, and with the passage of time they come to encapsulate, in some small measure, both an individual's lifetime, and the times in which he or she lived. Diarists write for themselves, and usually tell the truth as they see it. Private diaries must rank, therefore, among the most valuable of historical records. - from the Introduction by Dr Irving Finkel

""What was it? They could not tell themselves. They only knew that the black shadows at the top of the staircase had thickened, had coalesced, had taken a definite, batlike shape."" In this gem of science fiction, the heart-stopping adventures of Professor Challenger, the protagonist, make for the kind of exhilarating reading one expects from Doyle.