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To understand the way Sherlock Holmes thinks, you need to read one of these to catch a glimpse of his methodology.
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The classic Holmesian tale involves elements of deduction from seemingly nonexistent details, whether they be a piece of fabric or a burn mark. Phase 1: Start with short stories from the first two series. The order is, for the most part, chronological. End with The Valley of Fear and then The Hound of the Baskervilles, to see Holmes (and Doyle) at his finest. Continue with the early novels before moving on to the later short stories. But has anyone worked out a complete list of all the Sherlock Holmes stories, in an order in which they can best be appreciated?īegin your Holmesian adventure with short stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Some suborderings are obvious: for instance, "The Final Problem" should be read directly before "The Adventure of the Empty House", and "A Study in Scarlet" should most likely be read first despite not being chronologically first in-universe. My question is: given all these complications, in which order should one read the complete Sherlock Holmes?
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"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", Holmes's first case) or much later, after Holmes retires (e.g. Still other stories are set much earlier, before Holmes and Watson met (e.g. But the cutoff point in-universe between these two periods is roughly marked by The Sign of Four, when Watson meets his wife, and this was only the second story to be published so clearly the chronological and publication orders do not agree. Some of them are set during the period when Holmes and Watson lived together at 221b Baker Street, and others during the period after Watson's marriage when they saw less of each other. These were published between 18, and set between around 18.
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