The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- ISBN-10
- 1070374776
- ISBN-13
- 9781070374772
- Series
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Pages
- 432
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-05-26
- Author
- Arthur Conan Doyle
Description
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It was first published on 14 October 1892; the individual stories had been serialised in The Strand Magazine between July 1891 and June 1892. The stories are not in chronological order, and the only characters common to all twelve are Holmes and Dr. Watson. The stories are related in first-person narrative from Watson's point of view.In general the stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes identify, and try to correct, social injustices. Holmes is portrayed as offering a new, fairer sense of justice. The stories were well received, and boosted the subscriptions figures of The Strand Magazine, prompting Doyle to be able to demand more money for his next set of stories. The first story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", includes the character of Irene Adler, who, despite being featured only within this one story by Doyle, is a prominent character in modern Sherlock Holmes adaptations, generally as a love interest for Holmes. Doyle included four of the twelve stories from this collection in his twelve favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, picking "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" as his overall favourite.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were well received upon their serialisation in The Strand Magazine. Following the publication of "A Scandal in Bohemia" in July 1891, the Hull Daily Mail described the story as being "worthy of the inventive genius" of Doyle. Just over a year later, when Doyle took a break from publishing the short stories upon the completion of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a piece in the Belfast News Letter reviewed a story by another author in The Strand Magazine saying that it "might have been read with a moderate amount of interest a year ago", but that "the unique power" of Doyle's writing was evident in the gulf in quality between the stories. The Leeds Mercury particularly praised the characterisation of Holmes, "with all his little foibles", while in contrast the Cheltenham Looker-On described Holmes as "rather a bore sometimes", noting that descriptions of his foibles "grows wearisome". The correspondent for Hampshire Telegraph lamented the fact that Doyle's more thoughtful writing, such as Micah Clarke, was not so popular as the Holmes stories, concluding that an author "who wishes to make literature pay must write what his readers want"[Wikipedia]
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Other editions
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- 2021-05-12
- 173 pages
- Paperback
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