This volume completes the canon of the illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories reprinted from The Strand Magazine.It contains the short story series Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes. The Valley of Fear - a sinister novella which appeared in 1914- 15, His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes and the last twelve stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

This volume completes the carton of the illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories reprinted from The Strand Magazine. It contains the short story series Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, a sinister novella which appeared in 1914-15, His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes and the last twelve stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the best-known of all fictional characters. From the first appearance of the short staories in the Strand Magazine chronicling his extraordinary deductive powers,Holmes became a larger-than-fife figure whose devotees were stricken when it seemed that the great detective had perished at the Reichenbach Falls in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Young men put mourning crope in their hats, and the author was forced by public demand to resurrect his hero. From that day, a literary cult was born and continues unabated to this day. Perhaps it is best exemplified by the Baker Street Irregulars, who exist to perpetuate the memory,methods and iconography of the great detective. Its members comprise diplomats, judges, academics as well as great numbers of ordinary readers who enjoy the romance and atmosphere of Conan Doyle’s creation.  Sherlock Holmes’methods can be traced back to one of Doyle’s teachers at the Edinburgh Infirmary. Joseph Bell used to enliven his lectures by encouraging students to recognise a patient as a left-handed cobbler or as a retired sergeant of a Highland regiment who had served in Barbados, by the simple process of accurate observation and rational deduction. This inclined Doyle to attribute these qualities to a detective as a hero, which was unusual, if not unique, in English stories of the time.  The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes was in 1887, in A Study in Scarlet, which was presented as ’a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, late of the Army Medical Department’, and so the happy pairing of the deductive Holmes with the down-to-earth Dr Watson as foil was established. The Sign of Four followed in 1890, but Holmes did not really catch the public imagination until the first of the short stories, A Scandal in Bohemia, was published in the July issue of the Strand Magazine in 1891. These stories were illustrated by the remarkable Sidney Paget, who used his brother Walter as model for ’the tall, spare figure of Holmes’, standing before the Baker Street fireplace, looking down on Watson in his ’singular introspective fashion’. It was Paget who equipped Holmes with the famous deerstalker hat, though he never gave him the meerschaum pipe which became an icon following a stage production of one of the stories in the 1920’s.

 As well as being fast-paced detective stories, the Sherlock Holmes adventures provide a fascinating glimpse into 1890’s London. The domestic arrangements at 22 lb Baker Street are the focal point of the metropolitan civilisation that encompasses November fogs and hansom cabs, frock coats, silk hats and hurried railway journeys on trains that run on time, scandal in high places and murder in low ones.  From textual evidence, Sir Sidney Roberts concluded that Sherlock Holmes was born in 1854 of an English father and a mother descended from a line of French painters. He seems to have been something of an asthete at university, probably Oxford, but certainly not Cambridge. On coming down from university he took rooms near the British Museum to study those sciences relevant to his subsequent career. In 1881, in a laboratory at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, he met Dr Watson, and they decided to share the rooms in Baker Street. We know that Holmes refused a knighthood, but he did accept the Legion d’honneur. He retired to Sussex and kept bees,but of his life after 1914, there exists no record.

Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes

(1908-13)

Ⅰ. A Reminiscence of Mr Sherlock Holmes

1. The Singular Experience of Mr John Scott Eccles

2. The Tiger of San Pedro

Ⅱ. The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

Ⅲ. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot

Ⅳ. The Adventure of the Red Circle

Ⅴ. The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

Ⅵ. The Adventure of the Dying Detective

The Valley of Fear

(1914-15)

Part Ⅰ: The Tragedy of Birhtone

Ⅰ. The Warning

Ⅱ. Mr Sherlock Holmes discourses

Ⅲ. The Tragedy of Birlstone

Ⅳ. Darkness

Ⅴ. The People of Drama

Ⅵ. A Dawning Light

Ⅶ. The Solution

Part Ⅱ: The Scowrers

Ⅰ. The Man

Ⅱ. The Bodymaster

Ⅲ. Lodge 341, Vermissa

Ⅳ. The Valley of Fear

Ⅴ. The Darkest Hour

Ⅵ. Danger

Ⅶ. The Trapping of Birdy Edwards Epilogue

His Last Bow

(1917)

His Last Bow:The War Service of Sherlock Holmes

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

(1921-27)

Ⅰ.The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

Ⅱ. The Problem of Thor Bridge

Ⅲ. The Adventure of the Creeping Man

Ⅳ. The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

Ⅴ. The Adventure of the Three Garridebs

Ⅵ. The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

Ⅶ. The Adventure of the Three Gables

Ⅷ. The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

Ⅸ. The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane

Ⅹ. The Adventure of the Reured Colourman

Ⅺ. The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger

Ⅻ. The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place