DOYLE, Dame Jean Conan (1912-1997). An archive of correspondence from Jean Conan Doyle to Roy Pilot. Flat 6, 72 Cadogan Square, London: [ca. 1990s].
Includes: two autograph letters signed, one autograph note signed, four typed letters signed. Letters and notes on stationery, blank paper, or note cards. Most with associated envelopes. These wonderful letters from Dame Doyle (a highly decorated Air Commandant in the British Woman’s Royal Air Force) have excellent content, from describing Doyle as a father (“He was indeed a very fine and dear man and it was a great joy to have him as a father. Such an understanding one”), to inviting Pilot to lunch at her club and the subsequent thank-you letter (“It was such a pleasure getting to know you both, and the fact that all 3 of us had had the experience of military service in Germany was a special link”), and her joy in the re-publication of The Lost World (“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to know that “The Lost World” may soon be in print again thanks to all the hard work that you and Al [Alvin Rodin, the co-editor] have done in creating a new annotated edition… Jon [Jon Lellenberg, B. S. I. and Doyle scholar and writer] tells me that you would like a few words from me for use on the cover. Would this do: ‘The Lost World was one of my favourite books written by my father. Why? It features Professor Challenger, that monstrously rude, conceited man who is also strangely endearing.’”), and her thank-you note to Mark A. Gagen of the Wessex Press for sending her a copy of The Annotated Lost World (1996), in which she muses on her relationship with her father’s literary creations (“I have often been asked which of my father’s fictional characters is my favourite. A question hard to answer, because as a child Brigadier Gerard, Professor Challenger and Sherlock Holmes seemed so real to me that it was rather like having relatives who lived in Australia. Relatives one never met but often thought and heard about. It was difficult to choose for which one had the most affection. They were so different from one another. I always associate Challenger and Gerard with laughter, and it is particularly gratifying that Al and Roy have devoted so much time to that outrageous personality - Professor Challenger.”) Finally, she has a dig at fellow author Michael Crichton (“What a pity that Michael Crighton [sic] should have been so tasteless in borrowing the title for his own book about dinosaurs”). Another letter comments on her father’s delight in seeing the dinosaurs on the screen in the 1925 film version.