Sherlock Holmes – A Study in Scarlet

Arthur Conan Doyle

The first Sherlock Holmes novel – and the beginning of the world’s most famous detective partnership.

London, 1881. Dr John Watson has returned from military service in Afghanistan and is searching for a place to live. Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant and eccentric consulting detective, is looking for a flatmate.

Their meeting at 221B Baker Street marks the beginning of one of the most enduring partnerships in fiction.

Soon Watson accompanies Holmes to the scene of their first shared investigation: a mysterious death in an abandoned house, a cryptic word written in blood, and clues that confound the police but reveal to Holmes the first threads of a larger design.

From the streets of London to a dark story of love and vengeance in the American West, A Study in Scarlet combines detective fiction, gothic atmosphere and a dramatic tale of revenge. In this debut novel, Arthur Conan Doyle established the brilliant detective, the loyal narrator and the method of deduction that would define Sherlock Holmes for generations.

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A Study in Scarlet – Overview: Key Facts at a Glance

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Detective novel
Publication: 1887 (first published in book form in 1888)
Literary Period: Victorian literature
Setting: London in 1881 and Utah between 1847 and 1860, with later events spanning several decades
Main Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson, Jefferson Hope, Lucy Ferrier, John Ferrier, Enoch Drebber, Joseph Stangerson, Inspector Lestrade, and Inspector Gregson
Central Themes: Deduction and investigation, revenge, love and loss, justice, religious oppression, fate, and murder
Plot in One Sentence: After moving into 221B Baker Street with Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes investigates a mysterious murder in London and uncovers a decades-long story of love, persecution, and revenge that began in Utah.

Sherlock Holmes Publication Order:

- 1) A Study in Scarlet | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 2) The Sign of the Four | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 3) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 4) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 5) The Hound of the Baskervilles | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 6) The Return of Sherlock Holmes | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 7) The Valley of Fear | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 8) His Last Bow | Paperback* / Hardcover*
- 9) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes | Paperback* / Hardcover*

*Buy online with Affiliate-Link to Bookshop (Amazon).

Find all books in The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection.

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Famous Quotes

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”

Part I, Chapter II, p. 11 of the LIWI edition

“From a drop of water,” said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.”

Part I, Chapter II, p. 14

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”

Part I, Chapter III, p. 20

“There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

Part I, Chapter IV, pp. 31–32

“There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

Part I, Chapter V, p. 32

“I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.”

Part I, Chapter VII, p. 49

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First published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to the world. It is presented here as

Volume 1 of The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection,

arranged according to the order of original publication.
This is the English-language edition of A Study in Scarlet.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection 1. A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1888; first published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London, 1887); Complete and Unabridged Unillustrated Edition. Vollständige Neuausgabe ohne Illustrationen, 1. Auflage, Göttingen 2026.

EAN: 9783753804132
The First Sherlock Holmes Novel in the Original English Text. 2. Auflage. Sprachen: Englisch. 22,0 cm / 15,5 cm / 0,8 cm ( B/H/T ) | Reihe „The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection“, Band 1
LIWI Literatur- und Wissenschaftsverlag
Mai 2026 – 100 Seiten