Conan Doyle's writings

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.

“…if it isn’t too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you’ll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street…”  A quote from the story “The Adventure of the Empty House” from The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

“…in solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards…” The pillar next to it is a mirror to allow you to read the text the right way around. Aquote is taken from A Study in Scarlet.

• The Adventures of the Creeping Man

• A Study in Scarlet

• Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde

• The Sign of Four

• Alphonse Bertillon

• Return to You Don't Know Sherlock Holmes yet homepage

More to explore

• Books in the Collection

• Sherlock Holmes

• Other exhibitions using material from The Conan Doyle Collection