Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID PEACEThis volume collects together Sherlock Holmes's most memorable and intriguing cases, including adventures with mysterious masked strangers, ingenious heists, murderous plots and hidden jewels, which take the famous detective and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson from the streets of London and the English countryside to a chilling encounter at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.

I read these stories when I was a child and discussed them endlessly with my grandfather: one of my earliest literary memories. I know all the solutions off by heart now but it doesn't matter because the brilliance of the stories lies in the relationship between Holmes and Watson, which is both funny and touching, Now, as in his lifetime, cab drivers, statesmen, academics, and raggedy-arsed children sit spellbound at his feet -proof, if proof were needed, that Doyle's modesty of language conceals a profound tolerance of the human complexity... No wonder, then, if the pairing of Holmes and Watson has triggered more imitators than any other duo in literature. Contemporary cop dramas draw on them repeatedly, Holmes is a mesmerising creation and Conan Doyle a master storyteller, Arthur Conan Doyle is unique in simultaneously bringing the curtain down on an era and raising one on another, ushering in a genre of writing that, while imitated and expanded, has never been surpassed

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and began to write stories while he was a student.Over his life he produced more than thirty books, 150 short stories, poems, plays and essays across a wide range of genres.His most famous creation is the detective Sherlock Holmes, who he introduced in his first novel A Study in Scarlet (1887). This was followed in 1889 by an historical novel, Micah Clarke. In 1893 Conan Doyle published 'The Final Problem' in which he killed off his famous detective so that he could turn his attention more towards historical fiction. However Holmes was so popular that Conan Doyle eventually relented and published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901. The events of the The Hound of the Baskervilles are set before those of 'The Final Problem' but in 1903 new Sherlock Holmes stories began to appear that revealed that the detective had not died after all. He was finally retired in 1927. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died on 7 July 1930.