Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is the second anthology of the adventures of the best-known detective of all time (letters are still received at his fictional address in London). It consists of twelve stories and there is an admirable afterword by David Stuart Davies, who is regarded as an authority on Sherlock Holmes and has written all the afterwords for the Collector’s Library Holmes volumes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. After a rigorous Jesuit education, he trained to become a doctor at Edinburgh University. Eventually he set up in a medical practice in Southsea and it was there that he created his scientific detective Sherlock Holmes, a character based to some extent on one of his tutors at Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell. A man of many interests and talents, he was an expert in photography and was a pioneer of cross-country skiing. Toward the end of his life he devoted much of his time to his belief in spiritualism. He died in 1930.