The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan.
When the original Steps were later replaced, one of them, complete with a brass plaque, was sent to Buchan..
My sister, who was about six, and who had just learnt to count properly, went down them and gleefully announced: there are 39 steps." There were actually 78, but he halved the number to make a better title. "There was a wooden staircase leading down to the beach.
Buchan\'s son, 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.
In 2003, the book was listed on the BBC\'s The Big Read poll of the UK\'s "best-loved novels."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.
The novel formed the basis for a number of successful adaptations, including several film versions and a long-running stage play.
It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations.
It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood\'s Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.
The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan
