The Short Stories

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Fifty-six stories published across five collections between 1891 and 1927, originally appearing in The Strand Magazine before being gathered into the volumes that define the canon's short form. The collections span the full arc of Doyle's relationship with his creation - from the sharp, inventive work of the Adventures and Memoirs through the resurrection of the Return, the valedictory tone of His Last Bow, and the uneven final cases of the Case-Book. Each collection is distinct in period, quality, and tone, and together they contain the majority of the canon's most celebrated cases, its most significant character appearances, and its most consequential plot developments.

Part of Sherlock Holmes

The Sherlock Holmes universe is the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle, comprising four novels and fifty-six short stories published between 1887 and 1927. Set primarily in late Victorian and Edwardian London, it follows the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr John Watson across a career spanning several decades. The universe is defined by its central dynamic - Holmes's extraordinary powers of observation and deductive reasoning applied to cases ranging from the mundane to the genuinely bizarre - and by Watson's role as narrator and audience surrogate, whose admiring but grounded perspective mediates Holmes's more alien qualities for the reader. London itself functions as a character, its fog, gaslight, and social stratification providing both atmosphere and the conditions that make Holmes's work necessary. The fixed, closed canon and its public domain status have made it one of the most studied and adapted fictional universes in existence.

Publication Order

1
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1892
2
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
1894
3
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
1905
4
His Last Bow
1917
5
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
1927