Which Sherlock Holmes should you experience?

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes. Nearly everything made from them since adapts the man and his world rather than any one story: the Victorian series, the modern ones, the sister, the villain, the doctor who isn’t called Holmes.

None of them is the definitive one. Some keep the period and the manner, some keep only the method, and some keep Watson and lose Holmes. Which one is right for you depends on what you want from him tonight.

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Or browse every version

If quizzes aren’t your thing, browse instead: 29 versions across reading, watching, listening and playing.

• The Complete Novels and Stories, Bantam Classics (two volumes)

  All four novels and all fifty-six stories, in two fat paperbacks.

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Oxford World’s Classics (2025)

  The twelve stories that made him famous, and the place most people should start.

• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Oxford World’s Classics (2023)

  One complete novel, a moor, a curse, and a beginning, middle and end.

• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ed. Leslie S. Klinger

  The whole canon with a scholar at your elbow and hundreds of period illustrations.

• Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by Stephen Fry (Audible, 2017)

  The canon read aloud by Stephen Fry, with his own introductions.

• Sherlock Holmes, Granada Television (1984–1994)

  Jeremy Brett, forty-one episodes, and the stories told straight in period.

• Sherlock & Co. (Goalhanger podcast, 2023–)

  The canon retold as a true-crime podcast that Watson makes about his flatmate.

• Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017)

  Cumberbatch and Freeman, and the canon moved to present-day London.

• Sherlock: A Study in Pink (manga, Titan, 2017)

  The first BBC episode, drawn as manga and read right to left.

• Sherlock Holmes (2009) and A Game of Shadows (2011)

  Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, Victorian London, and a lot of punching.

• The Basil Rathbone films (1939–1946)

  Fourteen films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, made between 1939 and 1946.

• Miss Sherlock (HBO Asia, 2018)

  Tokyo, two women, and the first case moved to the present.

• Elementary (CBS, 2012–2019)

  Holmes in present-day New York, in recovery, with Lucy Liu’s Joan Watson.

• Mr. Holmes (2015)

  Ian McKellen as Holmes in old age, trying to remember his last case.

• Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

  Holmes and Watson meet at boarding school, a few weeks before Christmas, 1870.

• Enola Holmes 1–3 (Netflix, 2020–2026)

  Millie Bobby Brown as Sherlock’s younger sister, with Henry Cavill as Sherlock.

• Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes Mysteries

  The books the Netflix films came from, written for readers eight to twelve.

• Young Sherlock (Prime Video, 2026)

  Guy Ritchie’s origin story, with Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Holmes before he was anybody.

• The Irregulars (Netflix, 2021)

  The Baker Street street kids, a supernatural London, and Holmes at the margins.

• Moriarty the Patriot (manga, VIZ, 2020–)

  The villain’s side: young William Moriarty against Britain’s class system.

• Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

  Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud, on the same case.

• Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk (2011)

  A new Holmes novel in Watson’s voice, written at the Conan Doyle Estate’s invitation.

• Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

  Retired Holmes, keeping bees in Sussex, takes on a fifteen-year-old apprentice.

• Watson (CBS, 2025–2026)

  Morris Chestnut as Dr. John Watson, running a clinic for rare diseases after Holmes is gone.

• House (Fox, 2004–2012)

  Hugh Laurie as a diagnostician with Holmes’s method and a Wilson for a Watson.

• Without a Clue (1988)

  Watson is the genius, and Holmes is an actor he hired.

• Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (Frogwares, 2014)

  Six cases where you name the culprit yourself, and decide what happens to them.

• The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (Capcom, 2021)

  A rookie Japanese lawyer in late-nineteenth-century England, and a great detective called Herlock Sholmes.

• The Sherlock Holmes Escape Book: The Adventure of the London Waterworks (2019)

  An escape room in a paperback: you are at 221B, and every page is a lock.

Start with the stories

Where should you start reading Sherlock Holmes? compares the complete Bantam set, Klinger’s annotated edition, Stephen Fry’s audiobook and the two single volumes most people begin with.
Every version is the full browsable list.