The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Volume 3 Read Online

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

OTHER ANNOTATED BOOKS FROM W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

The Annotated Alice in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll, edited with an introduction and notes by Martin Gardner

The Annotated Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn

The Annotated Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn

The Annotated Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn

The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales
Translated and edited with an introduction and notes by Maria Tatar

The Annotated Brothers Grimm
Translated and edited with a preface and notes by Maria Tatar

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volumes I and II,
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by John le Carré, edited with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger

The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, edited with an introduction and notes by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins

TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

“Steel true, blade straight”

CONTENTS

Preface

A STUDY IN SCARLET

PART I—(Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., late of the Army Medical Department)

PART II—The Country of the Saints

APPENDIX: “MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,” by Dr. Joseph Bell

THE SIGN OF FOUR

APPENDIX: THE DATING OF THE SIGN OF FOUR

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

APPENDIX 1: THE BUTTERFLY AND THE ORCHID

APPENDIX 2: THE SOURCE OF THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

APPENDIX 3: WAS RICHARD CABELL “HUGO BASKERVILLE”?

APPENDIX 4: THE SEARCH FOR BASKERVILLE HALL

APPENDIX 5: THE DATING OF THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

THE VALLEY OF FEAR

PART I—The Tragedy of Birlstone

PART II—The Scowrers

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX 1: “WHO, THEN, IS PORLOCK?”

APPENDIX 2: PEOPLE, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS IN THE VALLEY OF FEAR WITH THEIR PENNSYLVANIA COUNTERPARTS

APPENDIX 3: THE DATING OF THE VALLEY OF FEAR

Chronological Table: The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes

Selected Sources

General

A Study in Scarlet

The Sign of Four

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Valley of Fear

Notes for Scholars

Acknowledgements

PREFACE

IN 1968, WHEN I was supposed to be engrossed in law school studies, I received a gift of William S. Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, published the previous year. This magical pair of volumes entranced me and led me back to the stories that I had enjoyed when I was young(er) and had subsequently forgotten. More importantly, the books introduced me to the idea of Sherlockian scholarship, the “game” of treating the stories as biography, not fiction. In later years, as I avidly collected things Sherlockian, I dreamed that someday I, too, would produce an annotated version of the Canon.

Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes remained in print for more than twenty-five years and became the cornerstone of every Sherlock Holmes library. Yet it had its idiosyncrasies, with the stories arranged in the controversial chronological order created by Baring-Gould and with footnotes that embraced, in many cases, Baring-Gould’s questionable theories regarding the life of Holmes. Furthermore, there were occasional errors that were never corrected because, sadly, Baring-Gould did not live to see publication of his greatest work. While the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, published in 1993, presented the stories in nine volumes (as they were originally published in book form), the scholarly notes largely ignored Sherlockian scholarship, concentrating more traditionally on analysis of Doyle’s sources.

I set out to create for the first time an annotated set that reflected the spectrum of views on Sherlockian controversies, rather than the editor’s own theories. In addition, this work brings current Baring-Gould’s long-outdated survey of the literature, including references to hundreds of works published subsequently. In recognition that many of the events recorded in the stories took place in England over 100 to 150 years ago, it also includes extensive background information on the Victorian age, its history, culture, and vocabulary. For the serious scholar of the Sherlockian Canon, there is an extensive bibliography at the end of this volume. A chronological table, summarising the key dates in the lives of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle, and major world events, is also set forth at the end of the volume. I have avoided “lawyerly” citations of the works consulted, but full citations may be found in the nine volumes of my Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, published by Gasogene Books.

Thirty-eight years have passed since publication of Baring-Gould’s monumental work, and the world of Sherlock Holmes has grown much larger. This edition was created with the assistance of new resources that now exist for the serious student—Ronald L. DeWaal’s Universal Sherlock Holmes, Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, Steve Clarkson’s Canonical Compendium, and scores of other handbooks, reference works, indexes, and collections, many in computerised format. It also reflects the aid of a new tool—the Internet, which makes immense quantities of minute information accessible to the student.

This is not a work for the serious student of Arthur Conan Doyle. While Doylean scholarship is vitally important, the reader of these volumes will not find reference to the literary sources of the stories or to biographical incidents in the life of Sir Arthur that may be reflected in the Canon. Here I perpetuate the gentle fiction that Holmes and Watson really lived and that (except as noted) Dr. John H. Watson wrote the stories about Sherlock Holmes, even though he graciously allowed them to be published under the byline of his colleague and literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

To keep this work from approaching the length of a telephone book, it is published in three volumes: The first two volumes consist of the fifty-six short stories which appeared from 1887 to 1927 (Vol. I containing the stories collected in the volumes called Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. II containing the stories collected under the titles of Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow, and Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes); the third volume presents the four novels A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Valley of Fear.