The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes: Including A Study In Scarlet, The Sign Of The Four, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, The Valley Of Fear And Fifty-Six Short Stories

About the author

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where he became the clerk to a surgeon whose diagnostic methods provided the model for the science of deduction perfected by Sherlock Holmes. He set up as a doctor and it was while waiting for patients that he began to write. Sherlock Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887). The Holmes stories soon attracted su ch a following that Conan Doyle felt the character overshadowed his other work. In The Final Problem (1893) Conan Doyle killed him off, but was obliged by public demand to restore the detective to life.