The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Product Description First serialized in 1887 in London magazines, Sherlock Holmes remains the greatest detective of all time. He was an instant hit with the public with his incisive mind and fearless approach to the truth. At a time when forensic science was just beginning to emerge, Holmes became the master of arcane knowledge and the criminal mind. His stunning leaps of deduction were the bane of England's evildoers and the envy of Scotland Yard. Arthur Conan Doyle killed Holmes off in 1891 when he tired of writing the stories, but public demand forced him to revive his hero shortly thereafter, and he continued with further adventures until 1927. Doyle wrote four Sherlock Holmes novels, and his short stories have been collected into five anthologies. Published over an astounding forty years, from A Study in Scarlet in 1887, to his final short stories published between 1921 and 1927, Holmes continues to thrill today. His name still evokes a vision of the smoking pipe and deerstalker hat, and remains synonymous with clever deduction and the ability to ferret out the truth from a maze of conflicting evidence. Enjoy all of Sherlock Holme's exploits in WingSpan Classic books. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes The Return of Sherlock Holmes A Study in Scarlet The Sign of The Four The Hound of the Baskervilles The Valley of Fear His Last Bow The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes Review Perfect bite-size treats ... you'll be hooked inside two pages Independent --Not Available About the Author The life of Arthur Conan Doyle illustrates the excitement and diversity of the Victorian age unlike that of any other single figure of the period. At different points in his life he was a surgeon on a whaling ship; a GP; an apprentice eye-surgeon; an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate (twice); a multi-talented sportsman; one of the inventors of cross-country skiing in Switzerland; a formidable public speaker; a campaigner against miscarriages of justice; a military strategist; a writer in a range of forms; and the head of an extraordinary family. In his autobiography, he wrote: 'I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded.' He was not wrong. But Conan Doyle was also a Victorian with a twist, a man of tensions and contradictions. He was fascinated by travel, exploration, and invention, indeed all things modern and technological; yet at the same time he was also very traditional, voicing support for values such as chivalry, duty, constancy, and honour. By the time of his death in July 1930 he was a celebrity, achieving worldwide fame and notoriety for his creation of the rationalist, scientific super-detective Sherlock Holmes; yet at the same time his later decades were taken up with his advocacy of the new religion of Spiritualism, in which he was a devoted believer.