Sherlock Holmes: The Novels

Though endlessly reinterpreted, reinvented, and imitated, the Sherlock Holmes stories have never been surpassed. Sporting his signature billowing coat and pipe in hand, the genius investigator Holmes captivates readers with his alluring melancholy and superhuman intuition, while his partner, Dr. Watson, remains ever the perfect foil, a classic Victorian gentleman with brilliant intellect. Collected here are all four Holmes novels—A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Valley of Fear—tracing the origins of the pair up through showdowns with their greatest archenemies, including the infamous Professor Moriarty. Set in the seductive shadow world of Victorian London, the stories of Holmes and Watson live on, as immediate and original in our time as in their own.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the Contributors

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh. After receiving a medical degree from Edinburgh University in 1881, he became an eye specialist in Southsea, with a distressing lack of success. Hoping to augment his income, he wrote his first detective story, A Study in Scarlet. Fifty-nine more Sherlock Holmes adventures followed.

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post. He is the author of two collections of literary journalism and several books on authors and reading, including On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling, which received the 2012 Edgar Award in the Best Critical/Biographical category.