The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 1 (Barnes & Noble Classics) [Hardcover]

Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Kyle Freeman (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2004

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

The Complete Sherlock Holmes comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories revolving around the world’s most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, step from Holmes’s comfortable quarters at 221b Baker Street into the swirling fog of Victorian London to exercise that unique combination of detailed observation, vast knowledge, and brilliant deduction. Inevitably, Holmes rescues the innocent, confounds the guilty, and solves the most perplexing puzzles known to literature.

Volume I of The Complete Sherlock Holmes starts with Holmes’s first appearance, A Study in Scarlet, a chilling murder novel complete with bloodstained walls and cryptic clues, followed by the baffling The Sign of Four, which introduces Holmes’s cocaine problem and Watson’s future wife. The story collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes feature such renowned tales as “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Musgrave Ritual.”

Tired of writing stories about Holmes, his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, killed him off at the end of “The Final Problem,” the last tale in The Memoirs. But the public outcry was so great that eight years later he published the masterful The Hound of the Baskervilles, which supposedly takes place before Holmes’s death.

The separate Volume II of The Complete Sherlock Holmes collects the remaining accounts of Holmes’s exploits, including “The Adventure of the Empty House,” which reveals the elaborate circumstances behind Holmes’s literary resurrection.

 

Kyle Freeman, a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast for many years, earned two graduate degrees in English literature from Columbia University, where his major was twentieth-century British literature.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Kyle Freeman’s Introduction to The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I

 

Arthur Conan Doyle began writing A Study in Scarlet in 1886 while waiting for patients in his newly furnished doctor’s office in Southsea, Portsmouth. He sent it to what seemed like every publisher in England before it was finally accepted by a small firm called Ward, Lock & Co. He was paid a one-time sum of £25, relinquishing all other rights to the publisher. The company thought it would be most effective in one of its big holiday issues, Beeton’s Christmas Annual, so Conan Doyle had to wait nearly a year before seeing it in print in December 1887. Thus after this long and uncertain gestation the world finally saw the birth of the resplendent career of the character who would become the greatest literary detective, Sherlock Holmes.

 

Conan Doyle got the idea for a detective story from the acknowledged creators of the genre. Edgar Allan Poe had written three short stories featuring Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin: “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter.” Conan Doyle lifted so much detail from Poe that he seemed a plagiarist to some. He took several key components from Dupin. Holmes, like Dupin, is a prodigious pipe smoker. He also places ads in the newspaper to lure the perpetrator of the crime to his apartment. He goes to the scene of the crime to find clues the police had overlooked. Yet another component borrowed from Dupin was his trick of breaking in on his companion’s thought process by guessing the links in his train of thought. Ironically, Holmes complains in this first story that this habit of Dupin annoys him, but apparently not as much as he claims, as he adopts it himself in two later stories. Most important, like Poe, Conan Doyle decided to give his detective a companion to narrate the case.

 

Such a narrator provides several advantages. He can frame the story more dramatically than the detective could because the companion is in the dark about the outcome. He therefore can sustain suspense and share his surprise with us when the mystery is solved. The narrator also has the freedom to glorify his friend, something the detective as narrator couldn’t do for himself without suffering the inevitable backlash from readers who don’t usually take kindly to braggarts.

 

Conan Doyle also borrowed from the work of Émile Gaboriau, a Frenchman who wrote the first police novels. His Inspector Lecoq uses scientific methods to build a solid case against the criminal piece by piece. Holmes’s scientific method owes the most to this source. Gaboriau also divides his novels into two equal parts, with flashbacks to prior action, a device Conan Doyle copied in the first two Holmes novels. Conan Doyle based Holmes’s deductive process—lightning quick and seemingly intuitive, though informed by careful observation of detail and mountains of precise knowledge—on Conan Doyle’s teacher at the medical school at Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell.

 

Once embarked on the process of stirring all these ingredients together, Conan Doyle had to choose a name for his detective. The first he chose was J. Sherrinford Holmes, then Sherrington Hope, and finally the one we know today. We don’t know where he got the name Sherlock, but we can be sure that the last name was a tribute to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American physician and author, father of the great U.S. Supreme Court justice of the same name. Conan Doyle had read and greatly admired his work, saying of him, “Never have I so known and loved a man whom I had never seen.” On his first trip to America Conan Doyle made a reverential visit to the author’s grave.

 

A Study in Scarlet introduces the formula that almost all the other Holmes stories will follow. Someone seeks out the detective at his Baker Street rooms to solve an unusual mystery. Holmes and Watson then set out to explore the scene of the mystery. The police are often involved, but of course they never have a clue. After an adventure or two that builds suspense, Holmes solves the case in the most dramatic way. The two investigators end up back at Baker Street, where Holmes explains any point in his chain of reasoning that might have escaped Watson’s understanding, and all’s once again right with the world. Doyle varies this formula in minor ways in a few of the stories in this first volume, but not often. (He will cleverly foil our expectations of this pattern in later stories.) This plot repetition, which might seem a weakness, turns out to be a strength. It contributes to that sense of solidness we get from this world in which logic triumphs over superstition, and where justice in one form or another is meted out to violators of the social order. The sense of order that runs through this world is one of the great satisfactions of these stories. No matter how bizarre the circumstances, Holmes will tender a rational explanation for everything. Criminals are caught not because they make a fatal error, but because all human actions, good and bad, leave traces behind. If you pay close enough attention to the causative chain of events in everyday life, and you’ve trained yourself to think logically, you’ll be able to follow that chain when someone has committed a crime.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics (September 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593082037
• ISBN-13: 978-1593082031
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars 3 Stars for the Content, 1 Star for the Quality May 9, 2007

By Jessica in NE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

For collectors: Barnes & Noble put out three series of hardcover "Barnes & Noble Classics" in the last decade. The first has yellow dust jackets (1992), the second has all black matte dust jackets with gold type and a diamond-design (1997), and the third in 2003 has black-spines with a literary picture on the top of the spine. This edition is the third kind (2003). It has a black silhouette of a detective on a blue background. The book is a regular trade-sized hardback book. It is held together with glue that makes crispy crackling noises when you open it. Normally, I'd love that, but with a book that is well over 700 pages, I worry about the quality and hope that the pages manage to stay in the spine. The edges of the pages are the "rough cut" kind, which is quite charming, even when you're picking the machine-leavings off the side of the book. The text size is readable, which is to say, it's not 8-point font. I'd say more 10 to 11 point.

However, if you're looking at this edition, you're looking at it because it's cheap, not because it's superb quality. And boy, at $9.95 list price for a 709-page book, you are getting a deal.

It looks quite nice on a bookshelf and the extraneous notes within are as listed: a short (short) timeline of Conan Doyle's life, a rather brief introduction to Sherlock Holmes, a page on "Conveyances (Modes of Transportation)," and a few notations in the back. But if you're like me, you're going to initially skip all of that babble for the substance. In this book, you will get: "A Study in Scarlet," "The Sign of Four," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and "The Memoir of Sherlock Holmes." If you purchase this volume, it would be wise to buy the matching volume of "The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II." Worth it and recommendable?... Yes, absolutely. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Value; Elementary! June 22, 2008

By Bentley

Format:Hardcover

This is a great value edition. I did not find the print to be as legible as I might have wanted it to be for this oversized paperback. I am starting out with volume one first to see how I do; have had some problems with my eyes so some of these jam packed paperbacks which have been scaled down to size are sometimes difficult to read; they pare down everything including the font size. So far so good; but I have put on some reading glasses so as to not tire my eyes out. The print is definately not large enough; and that is the one drawback. I am sure for some this would be a non issue; but not for this reader.

In terms of value you cannot go wrong except with the font size; the paperback is not one of those books which will take a beating either. But the selection of stories is phenomenal.

Now to the volume itself: the price point is good ($7.95); the font size small from my perspective; the stock used thin. But the anthology selection is glorious. There are an introduction and notes by Kyle Freeman who has been a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast for many years; there is a timeline of Doyle's life and outstanding events related to the character Holmes. There is even a note on the conveyances used during that time period. Holmes makes his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet and we are off. The volume has a set of end notes, some questions and answers from some well known authors; there are 23 wonderful classic Holmes tales as well as the The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet (already mentioned) and The Sign of Four.

It was wonderful to learn more about Arthur Conan Doyle's own life as a young ship's surgeon and how he sailed the Arctic in a whaling ship and all of his very unique adventures.... He had a Jesuit education but turned his back on catholicism; though championing spiritualism causes as he grew older. He was knighted by King Edward VII; but one of his greatest influences was Thomas Macaulay who happened to have passed away the same year that Doyle was born. From the time he was introduced to Macaulay at his Jesuit boarding school, he carried a volume of Macaulay's essays around with him for the remainder of his days. Doyle was very frank in admitting that these essays influenced him more than anything else.

Sherlock Holmes remains synonymous with the idea of the great detective. And everyone of us loves the idea of opening up one of Doyle's tales and hearing Holmes utter one of his famous quotes which infers his superior intellect and not too humble demeanor.

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know." And so it goes.

Good value, you cannot go wrong; just get a good pair of reading glasses and then everything is elementary!

Bentley/2008
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 1 (Barnes & Noble Classics) Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent complete reading edition. February 6, 2010

By W. Gillham

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Get this two-volume Barnes & Noble hardback edition. The paperback version is hard to see in the skimpy center margins. The hardbacks are small enough to be held comfortably, and the print large enough to read easily for most people. All the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, plus the four short Sherlock Holmes novels. Helpful introductions and brief notes. A complete collection at a bargain price.
Unless you want to wait indefinitely, you may have to look elsewhere [[...], etc.] for the Volume 2 hardback, which originally was cheaper than the paperback.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great edition of Sherlock Holmes June 25, 2011

By Dennis Hendrix

Format:Hardcover

These stories have been reviewed enough elsewhere, so I will confine myself to speaking about what differentiates this edition from others. First, I would caution buyers looking for a "complete Sherlock Holmes" -- often a book brags to have the complete stories and novels, then you discover the text is very tiny and the columns are wide enough to accommodate 1-2 sentences each. (Same issue with complete sets of Poe.) This makes for difficult reading, not just on the eyes, but the brain has better retention when the eye doesn't have to follow long rows of text that are easy to get lost in -- and you get those breaks between lines to think about what was read. Enough on that soap box.

This two volume set is comfortable to read, coming in around 1,500~ pages with rough-cut edges that give it an individual feel. It's fairly cheap too, especially buying it used. I've just finished "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and I'd suggest people new to these stories start there also.