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Mary Morstan, a young governess whose father, an army officer, vanished in 1878, has for six years received a large pearl in the post every year; now an…
Mary Morstan, a young governess whose father, an army officer, vanished in 1878, has for six years received a large pearl in the post every year; now an anonymous letter asks her to come to a meeting, and she brings Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The trail leads to a lonely house in south London, a man killed by a poisoned thorn, a missing treasure from India, a one-legged ex-convict and his companion, and a furious steam-launch chase down the Thames at night. The final story of the treasure takes the reader back to the siege of Agra during the Indian rebellion of 1857.
Context and significance
An American editor commissioned the novel at a London dinner in 1889, at which Oscar Wilde was also asked for a story: Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Conan Doyle wrote this, published in 1890. It opens with Holmes injecting cocaine and ends with Watson's engagement to Mary. Its picture of colonial India reflects the prejudices of its time. The first Holmes novel is A Study in Scarlet.
About the author
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.