It has been said that three fictional characters are known to readers all over the world : Ham- let, Robinson Crusoe—and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has been called "the most convincing, the most brilliant, the most congenial and well loved of all the detectives of fiction," and his stalwart friend and biographer, John H. Watson, M.D., late of the Army Medical Department, "the most famous and best-loved physician in literature."

Here, in two volumes, is every word that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( 1859—1930) ever wrote about the adventures of the detective and the doctor—fifty-six short stories and four complete novels, arranged chronologically from Holmes's first case, in 1874, when he was a university student, to his signal service to the British Empire in the opening days of the First World War.

William S. Baring-Gould, the editor, who was one of the greatest Sherlækian authorities, wrote two previous volumes about the Sage of Baker Street—The Chronological Holmes and Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective. To this work he contributed eleven fascinating chapters of introduction on Conan Doyle, on Holmes and Watson and the evil Professor James Moriarty, and on the Baker Street scene; he also provided "interludes" that throw a new light on many perplexing problems raised by Watson's writings; and in addition annotated each adventure from his vast collection of "Writings about the Writings." He amassed as well, from files of yellowing books and magazines, British and American, hundreds of illuminating maps, diagrams, coats of photographs, and drawings for inclusion this collection. All the most celebrated illustrators of the Canon are represented among them, Sidney Paget of the Strand, Frederic Dorr Steele of Collier's, and William H. Hyde of Harper's Weekly, as well as numerous others.

In these pages the millions, young and middle-aged and old, who love the detective and the doctor and the London in which they walked and talked and adventured, will find the definitive account of their famous.

The late WILLIAM S. BARING-GOULD was the Creative Director of Time magazine's Circulation and Corporate Education Department. He was perhaps best known for his studies on Sherlock Holmes—The Chronological Holmes and Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective. He was also the author of The Lure of the Limerick and, with his wife, Ceil, of The Annotated Mother Goose, and wrote for such magazines as Harper's, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire.

Mr. Baring-Gould was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and many of its "scion societies," including The Five Orange Pips of Westchester County. He was also a member of Mystery Writers of America.
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