Links to the Sherlock Holmes books and stories covered in this section:
Books (all) Short stories (all) Books (GEMs) Short stories (GEMs)
Commentary:
Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not invent the detective story (Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first: The Murders in the Rue Morgue) or the modern detective novel (the French writer Émile Gaboriau wrote the first: The Mystery of Orcival), he was single-handedly responsible for rapid rise in popularity of detective fiction in the late 19th century. Doyle created two of the most beloved characters in all of literature: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Holmes and Watson became the prototypes of many other famous detectives and their narrators who came later, most notably Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings.
Besides his detective stories, Doyle wrote many other books in various genres including historical novels, science fiction and fantasy, but it is for his Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories that he is best known. Other than his first two stories (A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four), all his subsequent Holmes stories were serialized in the magazine The Strand. Altogether, he published 4 novels/novelettes and 56 short stories featuring Holmes and Watson.
Many of the published stories in The Strand contained beautiful illustrations by an artist named Sidney Paget: these can be found in the PDF files I have linked on my lists of Sherlock Holmes stories. In all, Paget illustrated 37 short stories as well as the serialized version The Hound of the Baskervilles. More than anyone else, Paget is responsible for the popular image of Sherlock Holmes with his deerstalker cap and cape: these items were never mentioned in Doyle’s stories. The combination of Doyle’s powerful writing and Paget’s beautiful illustrations helped make The Strand one of Britain’s most famous fiction magazines. There were often long lines of people waiting for the next issue of the magazine with its latest installment of Sherlock Holmes stories.
Despite the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, at one point Doyle tired of writing them and wanted to focus his literary energies on other channels. In 1893, he killed off Holmes in his ‘last’ story The Final Problem. This caused a huge uproar among the readers of The Strand, and 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine in protest. The public pressure to bring back Holmes persisted for 10 years, and finally Doyle relented. In 1903, The Adventure of the Empty House was published, in which Holmes reappears and explains to a stunned Watson that he had faked his death to fool his enemies. Needless to say, the reading public was overjoyed, and Doyle continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories for 24 more years until his last story The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place was published in 1927.
Over the years, there have been many movies and TV shows based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. They vary greatly in quality and are not always faithful to Doyle’s original story; however, there is one point of near-consensus among Sherlock Holmes fans: Jeremy Brett was the actor who best portrayed Sherlock Holmes. Episodes of the Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett are available on YouTube, and I have provided the links to these episodes (along with many others) for the Sherlock Holmes stories on my lists.