This cheap edition of a Conan Doyle novel was published in 1901, ten years after first being serialized in the Cornhill Magazine. It is a medieval adventure story set at the time of the Hundred Years War with France (1337-1453), and therefore a significant departure from his Sherlock Holmes stories.
Cheaply produced books of this kind were often partly financed by advertising, and it is that which this blog focusses upon. The range of products advertised varied, but frequently related to the relief of ailments. Above is an advert for Sunlight soap, which was promoted specifically for cleaning clothes and linen. It shows a young woman (servant?) in a snow filled landscape.
Below is an advert for a popular patent medicine designed to relieve a wide variety of pains and discomforts. It is described as "a great specific for cholera, dysentery, diarrhoea". The brand name Chlorodyne gives little hint of its active ingredients which were chloroform, cannabis and laudanum, another name for opium.
Below is an advert for Fry's cocoa, which like many food products was also promoted as having potential medical benefits.
We then have an advertisement for Birkbeck Bank which was paying a generous two percent interest on both current and deposit accounts. Oh, would those days return! Actually, ten years later the bank went into receivership, and depositors got only half their money back. That surely provided a lasting lesson for the banking community. And on the same page, yet another medical advert, this time for multipurpose pills.
Below, another aid to health, capable it claims of dealing with such impostions as a "temporary congestion arising from alcoholic beverages", "biliousness", "oppression", and "nettle rash".
And finally, when hopefully you are fully recovered from your ills, why not visit the showrooms of Oetzmann & Co., for some modestly priced furniture?
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