The Thirty-Nine Steps

by John Buchan, Christopher Harvie (Editor)

Overview

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was seriously ill at the beginning of the First World War. In it he introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an 'ordinary fellow', is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and spy-ring alike, and must outwit his intelligent and pitiless enemy in the corridors of Whitehall and, finally, at the site of the mysterious thirty-nine steps. The best-known of Buchan's thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps has been continuously in print since first publication and has been filmed three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. In this, the only critical edition, Christopher Harvie's introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spy-master and propaganda chief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191500282
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	11/18/1993
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John Buchan (1875–1940) was Governor-General of Canada, biographer of Walter Scott and author of adventure thrillers. Featuring the daring exploits of Richard Hannay in the years before the Second World War his novels are still widely read today.

Kate Macdonald (Introduction and Further Reading) is a literary historian and publisher, and has published several books, chapters and articles on the life and work of John Buchan, including John Buchan. A Companion to the Mystery Fiction (2009), Reassessing John Buchan: Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps (ed. 2009), and John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity (ed. with Nathan Waddell, 2013). She was editor of the John Buchan Journal for eleven years. She lives in Bath.

Table of Contents

I The Man Who Died
II The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels
III The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper
IV The Adventure of the Radical Candidate
V The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman
VI The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist
VII The Dry-Fly Fisherman
VIII The Coming of the Black Stone
IX The Thirty-Nine Steps
X Various Partied Converging on the Sea

Editorial Reviews

Another hot new series from Penguin, "Great Books for Boys" offers a handful of top adventure stories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Each volume sports a nice vintage-looking cover to complete the spell. Great fun (and girls can read them, too!).

—Michael Rogers

Library Journal

Frederick Davidson’s voice is properly sardonic, and his supercilious British articulation is just right. The story’s extended chase scene inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s movie of the same name.”

AudioFile

Buchan’s technique as a writer is simple enough and well displayed in The Thirty-Nine Steps. He understood that in a thriller…what matters above all is to keep the reader focused on what is going to happen next…It doesn’t matter that the reader has no clue where he is being taken or, when he gets there, how the thing happened as it did. All that matters is that once you’ve started, you can’t put the book down.”

Telegraph (London)

It is the dimension of the mysterious that makes Buchan’s writing so unfailingly compelling.”

author of A History of Warfare John Keegan

It is just the kind of fiction for here. One wants something to engross the attention without tiring the mind. The story is greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells, and all that could make trench life depressing.”

An officer on the front in World War I

"Lethal, spare, clean and contemporary." —Guardian

From the Publisher