This edition of Conan Doyle's 1895 novel The Stark Munro Letters follows the policy of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle in using the first London book edition as the base text (E1), in this case that published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1895. Variants from the serialized version of the novel published in the Idler between October 1894 and November 1895 (SE), the Author's Edition of 1903 (AE) and the manuscript (MS) have been collated with E1 and recorded in the section titled ‘Emendations and Variations’ (pp. 274–321). The MS was transcribed from the copy held by the British Library, in a file (MS 88924) that also includes character sketches, notes and other work through which Conan Doyle developed his ideas for the novel. Transcriptions of these are also included here as appendices. Where there is an obvious typographical error in E1, this has been silently corrected in the base text for this edition, with the details noted in the Emendations list.

Appendix 1 contains the Preface from the Author's Edition of 1903 (Smith, Elder).

Appendices 2 and 3 contain transcriptions of the additional papers also included in the British Library collection relating to The Stark Munro Letters , ephemera that provide some insight into Conan Doyle's writing process and how he developed his ideas.