The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Cover of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Author	Arthur Conan Doyle
Illustrator	Sidney Paget
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Sherlock Holmes
Genre	Detective fiction short stories
Publisher	George Newnes
Publication date	14 October 1892
Pages	307
Preceded by	The Sign of the Four
Followed by	The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

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 June 1891 and July 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.

Arthur Conan Doyle began writing while studying medicine at university in the late 1870s, and had his first short story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", published in September 1879. Eight years later, A Study in Scarlet, Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story, was published by Ward Lock & Co. The novel was well received, but Doyle was paid little for it, and despite a sequel novel, The Sign of the Four, also being published by Ward Lock, he shifted his focus to short stories. In early 1891, the first editor of The Strand Magazine, Herbert Greenhough Smith, received two submissions from Doyle for the newly established magazine. He later described his reaction; "I at once realised that here was the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe." The first of these, "A Scandal in Bohemia" was published near the back of The Strand Magazine in July 1891. The stories proved popular, helping to boost the circulation of the magazine, and Doyle received 30 guineas for each short story in the initial run of twelve. These first twelve stories were published monthly from July 1891 until June 1892, and then were collected together and published as a book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on 14 October 1892 by George Newnes, the publisher of The Strand Magazine. The initial print run of the book was for 10,000 copies in the United Kingdom, and a further 4,500 copies in the United States, which were published by Harper Brothers the following day.