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EDITOR'S NOTE

The text of this volume has been established as follows. ‘A Foreign Office Romance’ after US syndication and London publication in Young Man and Young Woman (Christmas number 1894), was published in The Green Flag (1900) whose text is used here. All other stories appeared in the Strand whose text is in the main that used here, since Conan Doyle made some cuts for the book texts of two stories to ensure a chronological sequence for the Exploits (the Adventures were vaguely but not accurately chronological). Original publication in the Strand was: ‘Medal’, December 1804, ‘Brigadier−King’, April 1895, ‘King−Brigadier’, May 1895, ‘Ajaccio’, June 1895, ‘Gloom’, July 1895, ‘Millefleurs’, August 1895, ‘Devil’, September 1895, ‘Kingdom’, December 1895, ‘Crime’, January 1900, ‘Ear’, August 1902, ‘Army’, November 1902, ‘Minsk’, December 1902, ‘Forest’, January 1903, ‘Horsemen’, February 1903, ‘England’, March 1903, ‘Hussars’, April 1903, ‘Good-Bye’, May 1903, ‘Marriage ’, September 1910.

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard was first published by George Newnes, publisher of the Strand, on 15 February 1896, and Adventures of Gerard (Strand title The Adventures of Etienne Gerard) September 1903: the word ‘Brigadier’ was dropped as it meant a member, not the leader, of a brigade in France. ‘Crime’, while included in Adventures, first appeared in The Green Flag. ‘Marriage’ first appeared in The Last Galley (1911). Several titles were altered in later publication, sometimes over-revelatorily.

I have added head-notes to each of the stories to supply the chronology of the stories and add an additional whiff of historical context. (In ‘Minsk’, a misprint, ‘between Wilna and Smolensk’ for ‘between Wyasma and Smolensk’, present in all previous printings, has been corrected here.)

The Exploits appeared in Canongate Classics 38 in 1991, with a different introduction. Gerard evidently narrates ‘Medal’ during Napoleon’s lifetime, probably before Waterloo or even before Elba. The rest of the Exploits are supposedly told at a much later date, probably in the 1840s and before 1848 (see conclusion of ‘Devil’). The events of Adventures are recounted in Paris after Napoleon III has returned to power. ‘Minsk’ was inspired by a review in the Crimean War (1854) in which Gerard indicates some degree of official recognition, but since Napoleon III means so little to him in comparison to his uncle, we know no more than this. ‘Marriage’ seems to be narrated after Gerard has returned to his native Gascony. ‘Crime’ is the only story with a detailed third-person introduction (‘Ear’ getting a mere line), and it records his death of old age. Gerard’s biography has slightly conflicting elements in it, but he seems to have been born in the early 1780s, which suggests death at some point in the 1860s. The marriage to the daughter of Uncle Bernac recorded at the close of Conan Doyle’s novel Uncle Bernac is inconsistent with everything in the Gerard stories, but so is the Boulogne court life the novel assigns to Gerard. Our hero is not to be conflated with the real-life Maurice-Etienne de Gerard (1773–1852) who died a Marshal of France, and who is mentioned in ‘Devil’. Conan Doyle may initially have unconsciously registered the name (de Gerard was not a Marshal of Napoleon’s and receives relatively little mention in Napoleonic literature), and then, some time after the Strand publication of ‘Medal’, he rediscovered the historical Gerard and extricated himself by the assertion of kinship.

Owen Dudley Edwards