Editing The Thirty-Nine Steps (section)

== Background ==
[[File:The All-Story Magazine, Jun 5 1915 (IA all story june 5 1915).pdf|thumb|''The Thirty-Nine Steps'' first appeared in ''[[All-Story Weekly]]'' magazine  of 5 and 12 June 1915]]
[[John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir|John Buchan]] wrote ''The Thirty-Nine Steps'' while he was ill in bed with a [[duodenal ulcer]], an illness which remained with him all his life. Buchan's son [[William Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir|William]] later wrote that the name of the book originated when the author's daughter was counting the stairs at St Cuby, a private nursing home on Cliff Promenade in [[Broadstairs]], where Buchan was convalescing. "There was a wooden staircase leading down to the beach. My sister, who was about six, and who had just learnt to count properly, went down them and gleefully announced: there are 39 steps." The tunnelled stairway through the cliff actually consisted of 78 steps, but Buchan halved the number to make a better title. When the original oak steps were later replaced, one of them, complete with a brass plaque, was sent to Buchan.<ref name=tol070408/> The concrete steps now number 108, still running from the garden to the beach.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/39_steps.htm |title=The 39 Steps: Thanet Area |publisher=undergroundkent.co.uk |access-date=1 March 2018 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070402142342/http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/39_steps.htm |archive-date=2 April 2007}}</ref>

This novel was his first "[[dime novel|shocker]]", as he called it&nbsp;— a story combining personal and political dramas. It marked a turning point in Buchan's literary career and introduced his adventuring hero [[Richard Hannay]]. He described a "shocker" as an adventure where the events in the story are unlikely and the reader is only just able to believe that they really happened.<ref name=tol070408>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4263879.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1 "Lord Tweedsmuir: novelist and son of John Buchan"]{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, obituary, ''The Times'' of London, 4 July 2008 ("In 1990 [William] Buchan published a memoir of his own early life, The Rags of Time, in which he described his family life [...]"). Retrieved 8 December 2008</ref>