Where should you start reading Sherlock Holmes?
Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes, between 1887 and 1927. They are all in English and all in the US public domain, so the question is never which translation. It is how much of it you want, and whether you want somebody explaining it to you.
Every story is free to read at Project Gutenberg. What the paid editions sell is shape: all of it in two volumes, all of it with notes, or one good place to begin.
| Edition | How much | Length | Apparatus | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bantam Classics, Complete Novels and Stories | All sixty | 2 vols, 1,088 + 768 pp | None to speak of | Reading all of it, cheaply |
| The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ed. Klinger | All sixty | 3 vols (ebooks from Norton) | Notes on every page, hundreds of illustrations | A second reading, or a first one with questions |
| Stephen Fry, The Definitive Collection (Audible) | The canon, per Audible; reviewers say minus the Case-Book | 60-plus hours | Nine introductions by Fry | Listening instead of reading |
| The Adventures, Oxford World’s Classics | Twelve stories | 368 pp | Introduction and notes, Catherine Wynne | Starting with short stories |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles, Oxford World’s Classics | One novel | 224 pp | Introduction and notes, Darryl Jones | Starting with one complete story |
The two single volumes answer different readers. The Adventures is where Holmes became famous — twelve cases, each a sitting. The Hound is a complete novel that needs nothing read before it. The complete sets are for when you already know you want the rest.
Honest verdicts
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Oxford World’s Classics (2025)
You want to find out what the fuss is about, in one paperback, starting where the readers of The Strand started. the first collection exactly as Conan Doyle published it — “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “The Red-Headed League”, “The Speckled Band” and the rest.
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Read free — Project Gutenberg · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Oxford World’s Classics (2023)
You want one complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and you would not mind if it were a little frightening. the novel as published, with Darryl Jones’s introduction on its supernatural-versus-scientific tension, its colonial background and its folklore landscape.
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Read free — Project Gutenberg · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
The Complete Novels and Stories, Bantam Classics (two volumes)
You want every Holmes story there is, in two inexpensive paperbacks, and you are happy to read without footnotes. everything Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes: four novels and fifty-six short stories, split across two volumes.
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Read free — Project Gutenberg · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ed. Leslie S. Klinger
You have read some of the stories already, and now you want to know what everything in them meant to the people who first read them. all sixty texts, across three volumes: the short stories in two, the four novels in the third.
Other ways to get it: Hardcover, the short stories (2 vols) — Amazon · Hardcover, the novels — Amazon · Ebook — Kobo · Ebook, vol. 1 — W. W. Norton · Ebook, vol. 2 — W. W. Norton · Ebook, vol. 3 (the novels) — W. W. Norton
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by Stephen Fry (Audible, 2017)
You want the stories themselves, and your reading time is spent walking, commuting or driving. the text, unabridged, in one narrator’s voice, with nine introductions Fry wrote and recorded for Audible.
Other ways to get it: Listen — Audible
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
Common questions
Where should I start reading Sherlock Holmes?
With The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the first story collection: twelve cases, each readable in a sitting. If you would rather have one complete novel, start with The Hound of the Baskervilles. Both are free at Project Gutenberg, and Oxford World's Classics prints both with introductions and notes.
What order should I read Sherlock Holmes in?
Publication order works: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, then the Adventures and Memoirs, The Hound of the Baskervilles, the Return, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow and the Case-Book. Starting with the Adventures and going back to the first two novels afterwards works just as well.
How many Sherlock Holmes stories are there?
Sixty: four novels and fifty-six short stories, published between 1887 and 1927. Bantam's two-volume Complete Novels and Stories holds them all.
Is there an annotated Sherlock Holmes?
Leslie S. Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, from W. W. Norton: the short stories in two volumes and the novels in a third, with notes on every page. Norton currently lists all three as ebooks; libraries hold the printed set.
Is Sherlock Holmes free to read?
Yes. The whole canon is in the US public domain, and every story and novel is free at Project Gutenberg. The paid editions add notes, introductions, or just a convenient shape.
Or see every version — all 29 of them.