The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

These twelve stories, first published in the Strand Magazine in 1891 and 1892, made Sherlock Holmes famous. In 'A Scandal in Bohemia' he is outwitted by Irene Adler, forever 'the woman' to him; in 'The Red-Headed League' a pawnbroker is paid to copy out the encyclopedia; in 'The Speckled Band' a young woman fears she will die like her sister, whispering of a band; in 'The Blue Carbuncle' a precious stone turns up in a Christmas goose. Each case is told by Dr Watson, who never stops being amazed by his friend's powers of observation.

Arthur Conan Doyle, a young doctor, modelled Holmes's method on his teacher in Edinburgh, Dr Joseph Bell, who could read a patient's life from small details. Sidney Paget's drawings in the Strand gave Holmes his deerstalker and his famous profile. The first Holmes novel, which tells how he and Watson met, is A Study in Scarlet.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, trained as a doctor and wrote stories while waiting for patients at his practice in Southsea. Sherlock Holmes, modelled partly on his old teacher Joseph Bell, who could diagnose a patient's life at a glance, first appeared in 1887 and soon made Doyle one of the best-paid writers in the world.

He grew tired of his detective, killed him off in 1893 and was forced by his readers to bring him back. Doyle also wrote historical novels, the adventure The Lost World and campaigns for wrongly convicted men. Start with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles.