Sherlock Holmes

Detective fiction was a relatively new genre of writing when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first started writing. The genre emerged through the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, notably The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Mystery of Marie Roget in the 1840s. 

It was Conan Doyle, with his creation of Sherlock Holmes who firmly established detective fiction as perhaps the most popular genre of all.

A Study in Scarlet

The first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, initially appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. Later published in volume edition, it was illustrated by Conan Doyle’s father, Charles Altamount Doyle.

The story details the events following the kidnap, forced marriage, and later death of a young woman in the United States. 

Sherlock Holmes introduced himself to the Victorian readership as an extraordinary English reasoning-machine, a man using the latest forensic techniques and a method of deduction taken from Conan Doyle’s friend, Joseph Bell.

Holmes interprets footprints, shoe prints, carriage-wheel tracks, horseshoe prints, bicycle tracks, and tobacco ash. His investigations were the Victorian equivalent of the modern CSI series.

Conan Doyle produced The Sign of Four, the second of the two Sherlock Holmes novels written in Portsmouth at the request of the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, who he had met at a dinner party in London.

The character so captured the imagination, and indeed continues to do so. There are many thousands of books in print, films and TV series available to keep the interest of fans of all ages alive.

More to explore

• Books

• The Sign of Six

• The Adventure of the Creeping Man

• Arthur Conan Doyle

• Study in Scarlet graphic novel

• You Don't Know Sherlock Holmes Yet Exhibition - a wide ranging exhibition featuring items and documents from the Collection. This exhibition covers Conan Doyle's life and works, including his arrival in Portsmouth, his books, his fights for justice and the phenomena that is Sherlock Holmes.