Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by the British writer and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.Peter Haining, "Introduction" in Edited by Peter Haining. In this context, the term "canon" is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle's original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters.
Usually capitalised by fans of the Sherlockian game as "the Canon", the description of these 60 adventures as the Sherlock Holmes canon and the game of applying the methods of "Higher Criticism" to it was started by Ronald Knox as a playful use of the traditional definition of "canon" as an authoritative list of books accepted as holy scripture.Dorothy L. Sayers, Unpopular Opinions (London: Victor Gollancz, 1946), 7.
Novels The four novels of the canon: A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902) The Valley of Fear (1914–1915)
Short stories The 56 short stories are collected in five books: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) His Last Bow (1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) Published 14 October 1892; contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget.Wolfreys, Julian (1996). Introduction to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Ware: Wordsworth Classics. pp. vii, 115. . "A Scandal in Bohemia" (July 1891) "The Red-Headed League" (August 1891) "A Case of Identity" (September 1891) "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" (October 1891) "The Five Orange Pips" (November 1891) "The Man with the Twisted Lip" (December 1891) "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" (January 1892) "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (February 1892) "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" (March 1892) "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" (April 1892) "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" (May 1892) "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" (June 1892)
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
Contains 12 stories published in The Strand as further episodes of the Adventures between December 1892 and December 1893 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget (after the magazine publication, Doyle included "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" only in the His Last Bow collection). "The Adventure of Silver Blaze" (December 1892) "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" (January 1893) "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" (February 1893) "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" (March 1893) "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" (April 1893) "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" (May 1893) "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire" (June 1893) "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" (July 1893) "The Adventure of the Resident Patient" (August 1893) "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" (September 1893) "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" (October–November 1893) "The Adventure of the Final Problem" (December 1893)
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) Contains 13 stories published in The Strand between October 1903 and December 1904 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget. "The Adventure of the Empty House" (October 1903) "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" (November 1903) "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" (December 1903) "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" (January 1904) "The Adventure of the Priory School" (February 1904) "The Adventure of Black Peter" (March 1904) "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (April 1904) "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" (May 1904) "The Adventure of the Three Students" (June 1904) "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" (July 1904) "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter" (August 1904) "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" (September 1904) "The Adventure of the Second Stain" (December 1904) His Last Bow (1917) Contains 7 stories published 1908–1917. Many editions of His Last Bow have eight stories, with "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" being a part of this collection rather than in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" (September-October 1908) "The Adventure of the Red Circle" (March- April 1911) "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" (December 1908) "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" (December 1913) "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" (December 1911) "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" (December 1910) "His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes" (September 1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) Contains 12 stories published 1921–1927. "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" (October 1921) "The Problem of Thor Bridge" (February-March 1922) "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" (March 1923) "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" (January 1924) "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" (January 1925) "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" (February-March 1925) "The Adventure of the Three Gables" (October 1926) "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" (November 1926) "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" (December 1926) "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman" (January 1927) "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger" (February 1927) "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" (April 1927)
Extracanonical works Since the author's death, professional and amateur Holmesians have discussed endlessly the expansion of this canon, to include other works by Doyle, including works in other media, into the current complete adventures.Peter Haining, "Introduction" in Edited by Peter Haining. Rumours have always surrounded lost works, and in recent years further investigations have revealed more to the traditionally collected canon. As there exists no definitive body to argue what is and what is not canonical beyond the already established novels and stories, it is unlikely that any piece, no matter how good its claim to be "canonical", will ever be popularly received into published versions of the Complete Sherlock Holmes. However, as many as eighteen works have been cited as possible entrants. These works include plays, poems, essays on the character, and even short stories. Published collections of extracanonical works include: Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha, edited by Jack Tracy; The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Peter Haining; The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes, edited by Richard Lancelyn Green; and the final volume of Leslie S. Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library titled The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes. These works, each with slightly different contents, discussed several titles and their place in the canon. Noncanonical works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle In addition to the canon, Doyle wrote (occasionally with a co-writer) a number of vignettes, play adaptations and essays involving Holmes, and two short stories in which Holmes makes a possible cameo appearance. Most were published in various places during his lifetime; another has only come to light since his death. These are listed below with further detail. All these works except the plays are collected in The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Peter Haining. Short stories "The Field Bazaar" (1896)
"The Field Bazaar" was written for an Edinburgh University fundraising event. Doyle had been requested by his university to contribute a short piece of literature for a charity magazine. In the story, Watson has received a similar request and whilst he reads the letter at breakfast, Holmes correctly deduces the sender of the letter and Watson's thoughts with regard to the letter. It has many similarities with the canonical stories, most notably the metafictional twist in which Watson supplants Doyle as the author publishing his own stories in a magazine. It also plays upon not only the famous skill of Holmes' observations producing apparently miraculous results, but also the notion of the "traditional breakfast scenes" which open many Holmes short stories.Richard Lancelyn Green, "Introduction" in "The Story of the Man with the Watches" (1898) Though Doyle had killed off his character in "The Final Problem" (1893), he still wrote other short stories for publication in The Strand Magazine, including "The Story of the Man with the Watches" (published in July 1898, with illustrations by Frank Craig). It was collected in Doyle's Round the Fire Stories (1908) and Tales of Terror and Mystery (1922). The story concerns the appearance of a dead man in a railway carriage, with six pocket watches in his jacket. An explanation is offered by an unnamed "well-known criminal investigator", but the narrator notes that it is flawed, as it doesn't take into account all the facts. A man involved in the accidental murder of the victim writes a letter to the detective, saying that it was a "mighty ingenious" solution but entirely incorrect and continues to share the true events of that day. Some commentators have proposed that the unnamed detective is Holmes. The story shares the same backing for categorising as a Sherlock Holmes story as "The Story of the Lost Special", and appears in French anthologies. The story was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2009 as "The Thirteen Watches", in an episode from The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was also adapted for radio in 2012 as "The Addleton Tragedy", an episode of the Imagination Theatre radio series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
"The Story of the Lost Special" (1898)
"The Story of the Lost Special" was published in The Strand Magazine in August 1898. It depicts a seemingly inexplicable mystery in which a special train and its few passengers disappear between two stations. After the mystery is described in full, it is stated that a letter appeared in the press, giving a proposed solution from "an amateur reasoner of some celebrity". As with "The Story of the Man with the Watches", it is possible, and has been proposed by Haining, Tracy, and Green, amongst others that this "amateur reasoner" was Sherlock Holmes. The strongest clue to this is the quotation, "once one has eliminated the impossible...", used by Holmes throughout his deductions. However, this suggested solution is proved wrong by a confession from the organising criminal once he is later arrested for an unrelated crime. Haining suggested that Doyle was "getting out some Holmes" during the series hiatus, but given the failure of the unnamed detective it appears he was parodying his most famous creation. The story was published in book form in Doyle's Round the Fire Stories (1908), and has for years appeared in French editions of the complete adventures.Peter Haining, "Introduction" in Edited by Peter Haining. Plot for Sherlock Holmes Story (c. 1900) When searching through Doyle's papers, Hesketh Pearson, a biographer of his, came across a plan for an unwritten story. As Richard Lancelyn Green notes, "there is no evidence to show that it is by [Doyle] and strong internal evidence to suggest that it's not".Richard Lancelyn Green, in . Edited by Richard Lancelyn Green. Various authors have attempted to complete the story (named "The Adventure of the Tall Man" by Peter Haining) and put it alongside the canon. Some are very close to Doyle's plot, others include variations from it.Peter Haining, "Introduction" in Edited by Peter Haining. However no 'official' completion has been made (in the same way as The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes was intended as an official continuation of the canon). "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924)