Works · Story canon · 1887

Sherlock Holmes

First appeared Nov 1887 in one issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual

Nocturne plate · illustration (AI-generated, 2026)

Full title: The Sherlock Holmes stories (the canon, 1887 to 1927)

In Baker Street, London, the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes takes the cases that baffle Scotland Yard, and his friend Dr John Watson, an army surgeon invalided home from Afghanistan, writes them up. Holmes reads a stranger’s trade from a stained cuff, follows a footprint through the fog and treats a crime as a problem in evidence rather than in feeling. Across forty years of stories he meets blackmailers, forgers, a criminal professor and enemies from the empire’s far corners. His apparent death in 1893 and his return ten years later are among the best-known interruptions in popular fiction.

“No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow.

A Study in Scarlet, Part I, Chapter 2 (The Science of Deduction). Checked against Project Gutenberg ebook #244 (Taken from A Study in Scarlet (ebook 244); Gutenberg file does not name its source edition)

The publication record

The Sherlock Holmes stories (the canon, 1887 to 1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle

Story canon

Magazine Nov 1887 in one issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual Ward, Lock & Co., London A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes story. The Annual’s title page is dated 21 November 1887; four illustrations by D. H. Friston. Doyle wrote it in about six weeks in March and April 1886 under the working title ‘A Tangled Skein’. [1][2]
Magazine Feb 1890 in one issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia and London The Sign of the Four, commissioned at the Lippincott dinner on or about 30 August 1889. First book edition: Spencer Blackett, 1 October 1890. [3][4]
Story Jul 1891 The Strand Magazine George Newnes, London ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, first of the Strand short stories, with ten illustrations by Sidney Paget. [5]
Story Dec 1893 The Strand Magazine George Newnes, London ‘The Final Problem’, nine Paget illustrations; the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia also lists a US newspaper appearance on 26 November 1893. Doyle’s diary for December 1893 reads ‘Killed Holmes’. [6]
Story Oct 1903 The Strand Magazine George Newnes, London ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ opens The Return of Sherlock Holmes (US: Collier’s, 26 September 1903; the collected Return followed in February 1905). [7]
Serial Sep 1914 – May 1915 The Strand Magazine George Newnes, London The Valley of Fear (US magazine run 20 September to 22 November 1914; first book edition Doran, New York, 27 February 1915). [8]
Story Apr 1927 The Strand Magazine George Newnes, London ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’, numbered the 62nd Holmes story in publication order by the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia; Liberty (US) ran it first, on 5 March 1927. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes appeared on 16 June 1927 (John Murray). [9][10][11]

Strand Magazine cover vol.2 no.7, July 1891 (Scandal in Bohemia issue) Strand Magazine; Toronto Public Library scan, 1891-07. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859–1930. Sherlock Holmes first appeared when Arthur Conan Doyle was 28. Other works here: The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Attribution and scope

Treated as one entry for the whole canon of novels and short stories; the Hound of the Baskervilles also has its own entry.

This entry also has a part with its own page: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901).

Facts

Holmes sneers at his fictional predecessors in the very first story. When Watson compares him to Poe’s Dupin, he answers that ‘Dupin was a very inferior fellow’, and of Gaboriau’s Lecoq he says ‘Lecoq was a miserable bungler’. Doyle himself said in 1892 that ‘the best detective in fiction is Edgar Allan Poe’s Monsieur Dupin; then Monsieur Le Cocq, Gaboriau’s hero.’[12][13]
The Strand run began in July 1891 with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, illustrated by Sidney Paget, whose pictures defined Holmes’s look: ten for that first story, sixty for the Strand serial of The Hound of the Baskervilles.[5][14]
Doyle killed Holmes in ‘The Final Problem’ (Strand, December 1893). Popular accounts say about 20,000 readers cancelled their Strand subscriptions, but a Trinity College Dublin scholar presents that figure as a report and finds no evidence for the story that London clerks wore black armbands.[6][15]
The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia numbers ‘Shoscombe Old Place’ (Liberty, 5 March 1927; Strand, April 1927) as the 62nd Holmes story in publication order and lists it last in the Strand, about forty years after Holmes first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual.[9][1][16]

Setting

Victorian and Edwardian London, centred on 221B Baker Street; Watson first appears as an army doctor back from Afghanistan[12]

London
Baker Street
Dartmoor
Afghanistan

Themes

Notes on dates 3 notes on disputed dates and attribution

Date of A Study in Scarlet: the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia shows ‘Beeton’s Christmas Annual (21 november 1887, title page)’. Shown as November 1887 because a title-page date does not prove the day of issue.
Last story published: the Encyclopedia lists Shoscombe last in the Strand and numbers it 62nd; the Case-Book order (Shoscombe 11th, Colourman 12th) is not publication order.
The first printing of ‘The Final Problem’ may be a US newspaper appearance on 26 November 1893, before the Strand’s December 1893 number; the Strand date is the anchor.

Threads

Threads in

Descends from Murders in the Rue Morgue 1841
Doyle named Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin as the best detective in fiction in 1892, and Watson compares Holmes to Dupin in A Study in Scarlet.[13][12]
Descends from Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq (outside this timeline)
Doyle ranked Gaboriau’s Lecoq second among fictional detectives (1892), and A Study in Scarlet has Holmes and Watson discuss Lecoq by name.[13][12]

Threads out

Shares an origin with Dorian Gray 1890
Dorian Gray and The Sign of the Four were both commissioned by J. M. Stoddart for Lippincott’s at the same dinner on or about 30 August 1889.[4][17]

Contemporaries

Works on the timeline that first appeared within three years of 1887, and the other writers alive when Sherlock Holmes appeared (ages computed from sourced dates).