Sherlock Holmes Reading Order: All 60 Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 60 Sherlock Holmes stories over four decades: 4 novels and 56 short stories. That's a surprisingly manageable canon compared to most long-running series, and you can read it in almost any order once you know the basics. The debate isn't really about reading order. It's about where to start.
Updated April 17, 2026
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The Four Novels
Doyle wrote four full-length Holmes novels: 1. A Study in Scarlet (1887), 2. The Sign of the Four (1890), 3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), 4. The Valley of Fear (1915). A Study in Scarlet is the origin story, where Holmes and Watson meet for the first time and the detective's unusual methods are established. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the most famous and widely considered the best of the four. It's a standalone enough story that some readers use it as their entry point even though it's not first in publication order.
The Short Story Collections
The 56 short stories are grouped into five collections: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), His Last Bow (1917), and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). The Adventures and Memoirs collections, published in The Strand Magazine during the early 1890s, contain most of the iconic cases: A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, The Speckled Band, The Final Problem. These are the stories that made Holmes a cultural phenomenon.
The Death and Resurrection
Doyle famously killed Holmes in The Final Problem (in The Memoirs collection, 1893), sending him over Reichenbach Falls locked in struggle with Professor Moriarty. Public outcry was immediate and substantial; there are accounts of people wearing black armbands in mourning. Doyle held out for nearly a decade before bringing Holmes back in The Empty House (the opening story of The Return collection, 1903), explaining the death away with a technique called Baritsu. Doyle resented Holmes for consuming his literary reputation and preventing him from being taken seriously as a novelist. That ambivalence shows in some of the later Casebook stories, which are noticeably less polished than the early work.
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Where to Start: Two Schools of Thought
The publication order argument says to start with A Study in Scarlet because it's the origin story and sets up the partnership. The counterargument is that A Study in Scarlet has a long flashback section set in Utah that some first-time readers find jarring and slow. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes argument says to start with the short stories because they're tighter, more varied, and show Holmes at his best — A Scandal in Bohemia is an excellent first story. Either approach works. If you want the full origin, start with the novels. If you want to be immediately hooked, start with The Adventures.
Recommended Complete Reading Order
1. A Study in Scarlet (1887), 2. The Sign of the Four (1890), 3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), 4. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) — ends with Holmes's "death", 5. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) — set before the death, 6. The Valley of Fear (1915) — also set before the death, 7. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) — Holmes comes back, 8. His Last Bow (1917), 9. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). Following this order means reading the two later novels in their in-universe chronological position rather than by publication date, which avoids spoiling the resurrection.
Adaptations Worth Knowing
There have been hundreds of Holmes adaptations, but a few stand out. The Granada Television series with Jeremy Brett (1984-1994) is often called the most faithful screen adaptation and Brett's performance remains the benchmark for many fans. The BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch (2010-2017) is a modern reinterpretation that's clever and stylish, though it becomes erratic in its later series. CBS's Elementary (2012-2019) moves Holmes to contemporary New York with Watson reimagined as a woman — it's a procedural take that works better than it has any right to. The Guy Ritchie films with Robert Downey Jr. are fun action movies that borrow Holmes's name more than his character.
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