J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement
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J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement is an 1884 short story by a then-young Arthur Conan Doyle, loosely based on the real mystery of the abandonment of the Mary Celeste, published anonymously in the January 1884 issue of the respected Cornhill Magazine. One reviewer sought to attribute the story to Robert Louis Stevenson, while critics compared it to Edgar Allan Poe. Doyle changed the spelling of the ship from Mary to Marie Celeste. In 1887 it was included in the second volume, "Strange Stories of Coincidence and Ghostly Adventure," of the George Redway anthology, Dreamland and Ghostland. In 1890 it was published in The Captain of the Polestar and other tales. In 1922 it was included in the collection Tales of Pirates and Blue Water
It was presented as an eye-witness account of the end met by those on the mysterious "ghost ship." Much to Doyle's astonishment, some, including the Boston Herald, took the story as a true account.
Doyle's fictional story drew heavily on the original incident. Much of this story's fictional content, and the incorrect name, have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident.
[edit] External links and references
- Richard Lancelyn Green & John Michael Gibson, A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle, First Revised edition, New York, Hudson House, 2000.
- One site from todayinliterature.com
- E-text of Doyle's The Captain of the Polestar
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