Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories (Special Editions) - Softcover

"Arthur Conan Doyle is unique in simultaneously bringing the curtain down on an era and raising one on another, ushering in a genre of writing that, while imitated and expanded, has never been surpassed" (Stephen Fry)

"Sherlock Holmes is the very foundation stone of the edifice that is crime fiction" (The Times)

"I read these stories when I was a child and discussed them endlessly with my grandfather: one of my earliest literary memories. I know all the solutions off by heart now but it doesn't matter because the brilliance of the stories lies in the relationship between Holmes and Watson, which is both funny and touching" --(Jonathan Coe Sunday Express)

"Now, as in his lifetime, cab drivers, statesmen, academics, and raggedy children sit spellbound at his feet -proof, if proof were needed, that Doyle's modesty of language conceals a profound tolerance of the human complexity... No wonder, then, if the pairing of Holmes and Watson has triggered more imitators than any other duo in literature. Contemporary cop dramas draw on them repeatedly" --(John Le Carre The Times)

"Too much Holmes is no more likely than too much foie gras and no less desirable... Will delight his fans" --(Oliver Marre Observer)

It is more than a century since the ascetic, gaunt and enigmatic detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet. From 1891, beginning with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the now legendary and pioneering Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle's matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth patiently assisted by his doggedly loyal and lovably pedantic friend and companion, Dr Watson. The stories are illustrated by the remarkable Sydney Paget from whom our images of Sherlock Holmes and his world derive and who first equipped Holmes with his famous deerstalker hat. The literary cult of Sherlock Holmes shows no sign of fading with time as each new generation comes to love and revere the penetrating mind and ruthless logic which were the undoing of so many Victorian master criminals.