The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
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Twelve cases from Watson's notebooks: a king's indiscreet photograph and the only woman ever to outwit Holmes, a stepdaughter and the whistle in the night, a clerk hired to copy out an encyclopaedia for four pounds a week. The collection that made Holmes a fixture, and the best single door into the stories.
About the book
Collected in 1892 from the Strand Magazine, where they had been appearing monthly to queues at the newsagents, these twelve stories made Holmes permanent. A King of Bohemia wants a photograph recovered from Irene Adler; a red-headed pawnbroker is paid four pounds a week to copy out an encyclopaedia; a stepdaughter dies in a locked room after hearing a whistle in the night; a young governess is asked to cut her hair and sit in a particular window. The short story suited Doyle far better than the novel, and the shape set here — a client in Baker Street, an impossible circumstance, a journey out of London, and an explanation that makes the impossible look obvious — is the one every detective writer since has worked with. Holmes loses in two of these stories, which is part of why they are still read.
Characters
Sherlock Holmes — Detective
At the height of his practice, taking cases from kings and governesses on the same terms.
Dr Watson — Narrator
Newly married and in practice, dropping everything whenever a telegram arrives from Baker Street.
Irene Adler — Adversary
The contralto who sees through the disguise, marries, and leaves the photograph behind on her own terms.
Dr Grimesby Roylott — Antagonist
A violent stepfather with a taste for exotic animals, in The Adventure of the Speckled Band.
John Clay — Antagonist
Murderer, thief and grandson of a duke, whose Red-Headed League keeps a pawnbroker out of his own cellar.
The King of Bohemia — Client
A masked royal client whose engagement depends on a photograph he cannot buy, steal or explain away.
Mrs Hudson — Landlady
The landlady at 221B, who admits an unending procession of frightened people at unsuitable hours.
About the author
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician who began writing Sherlock Holmes stories while waiting for patients who did not come. He modelled the detective on Joseph Bell, an Edinburgh surgeon who could name a stranger's trade and recent travels from the state of his hands and boots. Doyle thought his historical novels the serious work, killed Holmes off at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893, and was pushed into resurrecting him by public protest and a great deal of money. He spent his last decades campaigning for spiritualism, and twice for men he believed wrongly convicted.