The consulting detective Sherlock Holmes visits the scene of the crime, makes his deductions, gathers information, reconstructs the events of the past, and brilliantly solves the mystery of the murder of Enoch Drebber.
The first Sherlock Holmes story was also the first book published by Arthur Conan Doyle. Rejected by the Cornhill in 1886, it was accepted for Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887, and appeared as a book, published by Ward, Lock & Co, in July 1888. It was the year of The Aspern Papers and Plain Tales from the Hills, but in terms of its generative effect on later literary and cultural production, Conan Doyle’s book has a claim to surpass these and all its other contemporaries.
The story is set in 1882 and begins with the narrator, Dr John Watson, convalescent in London...
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Citation: Kerr, Douglas. "A Study in Scarlet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10035, accessed 09 June 2026.]
