"A selection of the most interesting and entertaining of the letters written to the world's most famous detective" ; "A selection of letters which were received by Abbey National at 221 Baker Street"-- Prové de l'editor.

These are the last twelve stories Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes and Watson. They reflect the disillusioned world of the 1920s and also include some of the wittiest passages in the series.

From the strange case of 'The Red-Headed League' to the extraordinary tale of 'The Engineer's Thumb', Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson grapple with treachery, murder, and ingenious crimes of all kinds. But no case is too challening for the immortal detective's unique power of deduction.

This masterful collection of seventeen classic mystery stories, dating from 1837 to 1914, traces the earliest history of popular detective fiction. Today, the figure of Sherlock Holmes towers over detective fiction like a colossus—but it was not always so. Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin, the hero of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” anticipated Holmes’ deductive reasoning by more than forty years. In A Study in Scarlet, the first of Holmes’ adventures, Doyle acknowledged his debt to Poe—and to Émile Gaboriau, whose thief-turned-detective Monsieur Lecoq debuted in France twenty years earlier. If Rue Morgue was the first true detective story in English, the title of the first full-length detective novel is more hotly contested. Among the possibilities are two books by Wilkie Collins—The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868)—Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent (1861) or Aurora Floyd (1862), and The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3) by the pseudonymous “Charles Felix.” As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages—hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted “cozy” murders in Britain—and these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required the intelligence and clear-sightedness that characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured in these pages.

A dazzling collection of rare art and documents illuminate the life of Sherlock Holmes beyond the page. As one of the most beloved characters in the English language, Sherlock Holmes sometimes seems to have a life of his own, one that leaps beyond the pages of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's mystery stories. Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects aims its magnifying glass toward a host of overlooked extra-literary objects that tell the story of the famed detective's publication history outside of Doyle's original canon. ​ Drawing on his extensive collection of Holmes-related bibliographic material, Glen Miranker brings to light exhibits ranging from original manuscripts, handwritten letters, business correspondence, vintage book art, pirated editions, and more, all presented in thematic clusters that highlight their significance to the case at hand. Throughout, Miranker invites readers to share in the collector's enthusiasm for the kinds of rarities and oddities that help decipher the appeal of Sherlock Holmes in ways that transcend what can be found on the page.

A collection of letters between Arthur Conan Doyle (author and creator of Sherlock Holmes) and his mother, covering most of his life, written between 1867 and the year of her death in 1921.