Product Description

With an Introduction by Dr. Julian Wolfreys This edition of The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes contains the earliest cases of the greatest fictional detective of all time. It comprises the complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, newly reprinted from the original text of The Strand Magazine. It is illustrated by Sidney Paget, the finest of illustrators, and the man from whom our images of Sherlock Holmes and his world derive. This is the first of three volumes of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. The three books present all the Holmes stories arranged chronologically in order of first publication.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25770 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Customer Reviews

The essential collection
For lovers of the Holmes canon, this collection is an essential addition to their bookshelf. It is a model of literary scholarship, with excellent critical introductions from various editors and some very illuminating notes on the tales. It is all beautifully produced, too. A must for Sherlockians.

Absolute classic
A truly great collection of short stories. The stereotype is that all Sherlock Holmes stories follow a rigid murder-mystery formula, but this could not be further from the truth. What makes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes such a pleasure to read is the *variety* - aside from each story revolving around a mystery, they are all absolutely unique. There is the traditional whodunnit of 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery', the Christmassy 'The Blue Carbuncle', the Jamesian (MR James, that is) 'The Speckled Band' and the utterly horrifying 'The Engineer's Thumb'. The tone of the stories varies terrifically as well, from the charming and forgiving 'The Blue Carbuncle' to the anger of 'The Five Orange Pips'; stories take place from the scenic countryside of 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery' to the opium dens of London's dockyards in 'The Man With the Twisted Lip', both captured with the same level of detail (only to be expected when the narrator is the best friend of England's finest detective!).

There are a few problems with the collection - the whodunnit nature of some suffer from the short story format not allowing for many characters to be introduced; Conan-Doyle's writing style concentrates, as its title character does, on certain details of a location without bothering for a more traditional atmospheric description (though images are conjured nevertheless), which IMO only adds to the wonderful crime-scene feel of the stories; and that the word "singular" appears without fail in every single story.

Regardless, I would heartily recommend this book as a most enjoying collection of stories, the perfect thing to read after finishing a heavy novel. Readers new to Holmes however should begin by reading the novels, especially 'A Study in Scarlet' (also the very first Holmes story) and the classic 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.

5 Stars Is Not Enough!
The guy who gave this 1-star must of been having a bad day. This handsome 9 volume set is one of my most prized possessions. You'll find the entire canon, logically broken up into several books. It's the complete original Conan Doyle stories, they're classics, they're Sherlock!