The Thirty-Nine Steps

JOHN BUCHAN was born in Perth in 1875, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, and educated at Glasgow. He gained a first at Oxford University, where he began writing, producing two volumes of essays, four novels and two collections of stories and poems before the age of twenty-five. He worked briefly as a lawyer, then served as a private secretary in the colonial administration of South Africa after the Boer War. During the war he worked both as a journalist and at Britain's War Propaganda Bureau, eventually becoming Director of Information. He published his most popular novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, in 1915, and it has never since been out of print. In 1935 Buchan was elevated to the peerage, becoming Baron Tweedmuir of Elsfield, and later that year was appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V. He died on February 11, 1940.

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.

"Richard Hannay is, like his American brother Philip Marlowe, a modern knight errant. Charging through a hypocritical world, he is a seeker after truth with a boundless love of nature, a liking for simple pleasures and a hatred of pettiness and snobberies... Buchan's novels are eerily resonant with today's troubles...Hannay is a hero of all times."
--Observer

"Buchan makes superb use of wild landscapes in this economical and gripping story."
--The Times

1. The man who died; 2. The milkman sets out on his travels; 3. The adventure of the literary innkeeper; 4. The adventure of the Radical candidate; 5. The adventure of the spectacled roadman; 6. The adventure of the bald archaeologist; 7. The dry-fly fisherman; 8. The coming of the Black Stone; 9. The thirty-nine steps; 10. Various parties converging on the sea.