Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
John Watson & Sherlock Holmes (illustration by Sidney Paget for The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter)

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927 in 62 cases (4 novels and 58 short stories). He is an amateur detective with powerful observation and deduction abilities.

With 62 stories of the detective, it is the most numerous of Conan Doyle recurring characters. But it was not his first stories, see Complete Works. Though Sherlock Holmes was the most popular, Conan Doyle always thought that his creature was obscuring the rest of his works, especially the historical novels, so he decided to kill him in 1893 at the end of the 26th story, The Adventure of the Final Problem. However, 8 years later, under family and editor pressure, he "resurrected" the detective and wrote 34 more stories between 1901 and 1927.


The Stories

The Characters

Adaptations

FAQ

Sherlockiana