Micah Clarke

This historical novel, first published in 1889, was Doyle's third book -- his first hardcover one, preceded only by the two paper-wrappered titles A Study in Scarlet and The Mystery of Cloomber. Micah Clarke was quite successful, running through several quick printings, though Doyle had to take it to numerous publishers before Andrew Lang at Longmans finally accepted it. Doyle brought together his knowledge of the seventeenth century and supplemented it with months of research on detail. Then, at intervals of tramping medical rounds or studying optics at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital, he wrote the book in three months.

Now the power of Micah Clarke, aside from its best action scenes -- the bloodhounds on Salisbury Plain, the brush with the King's Dragoons, the fight in Wells Cathedral, the blinding battle scene at Sedgemoor -- still lies in its characterization: that other imagination, the use of homely detail, by which each character grows into life before ever a shot is fired in war.

It was attempt by Conan Doyle to present the story of the Puritans in a more favorable light than generally thought of in England at the time the book was written - a historical romance about the Monmouth rebellion and 'Hanging Judge' Jeffries. told by a humble adherent of the Duke of Monmouth - the whole story of the rising in Somerset, the triumphant advance towards Bristol and Bath, and the tragic rout at Sedgemoor (1685).