The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1]
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.” (“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” page 302)
“Crime is common. Logic is rare.”
(“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” page 377)
Like all Holmes’s reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. (“The Stock-Broker’s Clerk,” page 433)
“Elementary,” said he. (“The Crooked Man,” page 492)
Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips.
(The Hound of the Baskervilles, page 592)
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A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887, The Sign of Four in 1890, and The
Hound of the Baskervilles in 1902. The stories in Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes were first collected and published in 1891, and those in The
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in 1892.
Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Chronology, A Note on Conveyances, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.
General Introduction, Introduction to Volume I, A Note on
Conveyances, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2003 by Kyle Freeman.
Note on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The World of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and Sherlock Holmes, and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
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The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-034-1 ISBN-10: 1-59308-034-4
eISBN : 978-1-411-43197-3
LC Control Number 2003102759
Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
QM
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SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Arthur Conan Doyle had many careers—physician, writer of popular fiction and nonfiction, war correspondent, historian, and spiritualist—but it was the creation of his immensely popular Sherlock Holmes that was to be his enduring legacy. The author was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22, 1859. His mother raised ten children on her husband’s small income; his father’s poor health and heavy drinking made that a daunting task. Despite this adversity, his mother’s willfulness and her exhaustive genealogical research instilled in Arthur a decided sense of purpose.
After early education in Jesuit schools, Conan Doyle enrolled in Edinburgh University, where he earned a medical degree while working part-time to support his family. At the university one of his instructors was Dr. Joseph Bell, who had an uncanny ability to deduce the histories of his patients and who later became a template for Sherlock Holmes. Another teacher, an eccentric Professor Rutherford, inspired the character of Professor George Edward Challenger in The Lost World and other novels and short stories.
Having had a taste of adventure when he served as ship’s physician on a Greenland Sea whaler while still a student, Conan Doyle longed to travel after graduation and so took a position as doctor on a ship en route to West Africa. Returning to England, he set up as a physician in 1882. His practice was small at first, so he had time to do some writing. In 1887 the first Sherlock