The Sherlock Holmes canon
Four novels and fifty-six short stories. Nobody knows what order they go in.
7,9from 4.412 reader ratings · 60 works, 1887–1927
The canon took forty years, in instalments, in a monthly magazine. That is why "where do I start" is harder here than in any cycle written as a cycle — and why this page exists.
Why it is a tangle
Three reasons, all of them Victorian
Doyle was not writing a series. He was writing stories for The Strand Magazine, one a month, gathered into volumes only years later. Hence the first problem: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is not a novel but twelve separate stories — and in a bookshop it looks exactly like a novel.
Second: in 1893 Doyle threw Holmes off the Reichenbach Falls because he had had enough. Strand readers cancelled subscriptions and black armbands appeared in London. Eight years later he relented — first with The Hound of the Baskervilles, set before the death, then with a real return.
Third is practical: sixty works, and only six volumes carry a score. Reader ratings accumulate on volumes, not on individual stories, so a ranking of the stories themselves simply does not exist — not here and not anywhere.
Two ways in
Both are correct. They differ in what you want from the first evening
From the beginning
if you like knowing how it started
- A Study in Scarlet · 1887 — Watson comes back from Afghanistan and needs a flatmate
- The Sign of the Four · 1890
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · 1892 — twelve stories
- then straight on, volume by volume
From the best
if you want to know whether this is for you at all
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · 1892 — short forms, the style at full strength
- The Hound of the Baskervilles · 1902 — highest rated, 8.14
- go back to A Study in Scarlet once you know you are staying
What not to do: do not read "The Final Problem" (in The Memoirs) before The Hound of the Baskervilles. Technically you may — Doyle published them that way — but you will spoil the only real turn in the whole canon.
The six volumes that carry a score
The fifty-six stories are spread across collections; the collections are what gets rated
- 1887 · A Study in Scarletnovel, the first meeting — 7.95
- 1890 · The Sign of the Fournovel — 7.55
- 1902 · The Hound of the Baskervillesnovel, highest rated — 8.14
- 1905 · The Return of Sherlock Holmes13 stories — 8.03
- 1915 · The Valley of Fearnovel — 7.76
- 1927 · The Case-Book12 stories, the last volume — 7.88
The Adventures (1892) and The Memoirs (1894) have too few ratings in our data to earn a score. We would rather show nothing than guess.
The man who decided what Holmes looks like
Sidney Paget, 1860–1908
Doyle described Holmes once, briefly: tall, thin, hawk-nosed. Everything else — the cap, the cape, the profile the whole world recognises — was invented by the Strand’s illustrator. Paget drew from his brother Walter and added the cap because that is how a gentleman dressed to travel to the country.
The story goes that the commission was meant for Walter and the office confused the names on the envelope. The Paget family denied it — but the anecdote has outlived a century, because the brother really was the model.
Every drawing on this page is Paget’s and is in the public domain — he died in 1908. None of it is generated, and you may take these from here without asking us.
Questions people actually ask
Where do I start with Sherlock Holmes?
With A Study in Scarlet (1887) if you want to meet Holmes and Watson in the order they met each other. With The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) if you would rather test the style on short forms — that is the collection that made Doyle famous.
How many Sherlock Holmes books are there?
The canon — the works Conan Doyle wrote — is 4 novels and 56 short stories: 60 works in 9 volumes. Everything else is by other authors.
Do I have to read them in order?
No. The stories stand alone. One exception: "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House" are a pair and must be read in that order, and not before you have a few other volumes behind you.
Which volume is best?
By reader ratings, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) — 8.14 out of 10, the highest of the six scored volumes. It is also the most filmed story in the canon.
Can I read them free?
The English originals, yes — Conan Doyle died in 1930. They are at Project Gutenberg: A Study in Scarlet, The Adventures, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Translations are separate — a translation carries its own copyright.
Read it
The whole canon has been free since 1930. A single-volume collected edition has not.
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The whole canon, volume by volume
All sixty works in publication order, with years and scores where they exist — plus this list in eight other languages.