Adventures with Sherlock Holmes — The Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes first came to the public's attention in the pages of popular magazines. These relatively inexpensive publications were not often preserved by their owners in the way hard bound books were, so many of the periodicals featuring Holmes are now rare items in high demand. This is especially true of the first two Holmes novellas A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine respectively. Thereafter, the detective's fame really took off when Arthur Conan Doyle arranged to provide a series of short stories about the character in The Strand Magazine. The Toronto Public Library's collection of letters from Conan Doyle to his Strand publisher Herbert Greenhough Smith gives many insights into the author's approach to writing for the magazine.

Read hand-written letter from Arthur Conan Doyle (PDF, transcription included) to Herbert Greenhough Smith, ca. 1903.

Read hand-written letter from Arthur Conan Doyle (PDF, transcription included) to Herbert Greenhough Smith, August 23, 1912.