Beeton's Christmas Annual was a British paperback magazine printed yearly between 1860 and 1898, founded by Samuel Orchart Beeton. In 1865, the magazine was purchased by Ward, Lock & Co.
In the fall of 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle submitted A Study in Scarlet to Ward, Lock & Co., after trying several more respectable publishers. They offered to buy the copyright for £25 provided they could publish it the following year, citing a glut of "cheap fiction".Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures. Little, Brown and Company, 1924. 69f. They brought the novel out in the November 1887 issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual. The narrative introduced the characters Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson.
References
External links
The Best of Sherlock Holmes – Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887: An Annotated Checklist and Census Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887 (Wikisource)