DOYLE, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930). The White Company [and:] Autograph Postcard Signed. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1891. 3 volumes, 8vo. Half-titles; publisher's ads at the end of volumes II and III. Original red-brown cloth blocked and lettered in black, gilt-lettered spines, floral endpapers. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF DOYLE'S FAVORITE NOVEL, ONE OF 750 COPIES; WITH AN AUTOGRAPH POSTCARD SIGNED BY DOYLE LAID-IN. Green & Gibson A8a. Sadleir 752. Woolf 1923.

Postcard is on Doyle's Crowborough stationery. Approximately 3 1/2 x 4 1/2". Written in pencil to an unstated bookseller (address is scuffed off on verso), undated. Signed "A Conan Doyle". Toned, soiled, one vertical crease, verso scuffed with loss, with cancels. Good. "Let me know if you hear of a reasonably cheap copy of Kemble's "Anglo-Saxons". Also of a Welsh Dictionary. Also of Bede's Ecclesiastical Chronicle. Meanwhile you [minor damage to "y"] can send me 136. Inscriptions. 584. Bookhunter. 694. Beleagured City. A Conan Doyle". 

Doyle once remarked in a symposium on the book he had most enjoyed writing, the author stated: "Of my novels The White Company gave me most pleasure. I was young and full of the first joy of life and action, and I think I got some of it into my pages. When I wrote the last line, I remember that I cried: 'Well, I'll never beat that.' And threw the inky pen at the opposite wall, which was papered with duck's egg green!".

Spines rubbed, light marginal rubbing, bumping and occasional minor soiling to boards, endleaves toned, inkstain to last few ad leaves and rear endleaves of volume III. Bright and fine better than usually seen ("This is undoubtedly the finest copy of the first edition extant." - from the 1954 invoice from Henry Clapp Smith, which is laid-in).