INTRODUCTION

The play was a sellout, and its success was enough to convince Conan Doyle that there was still a public appetite for the detective. So, while the play was still on, he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles. When the novel began its serialization in The Strand Magazine in August 1901, queues extended from newsstands across the country. The story sees Holmes back at the height of his powers, solving the mystery of a “giant hound” in western England. It is a curious fact that while the Holmes in this tale remains resolutely worldly, rejecting out of hand the idea that the grisly dog is supernatural, in these same years Conan Doyle was evidently reflecting on matters of faith—his semiautobiographical novel, The Stark Munro Letters, documents his rejection of Roman Catholicism and foreshadows his later interest in spiritualism. At this time, he was also writing his patriotic histories of the Boer War, based partly on the period he had spent in an army hospital unit in South Africa (where Sir Henry Baskerville made his money). He was knighted for this work by Edward VII in 1902—the king himself numbered among Holmes’s fans and was as eager as anybody to hear more of his exploits.

The events in The Hound of the Baskervilles predate Holmes’s apparent death in “The Final Problem,” and so did not resurrect the detective as fans had hoped. Holmes’s return from the dead in October 1903, in the short story “The Empty House,” provoked an emotional response from fans. Watson, too, was overjoyed at the news, swiftly selling his practice to move back into 221B Baker Street. Watson later discovers that the practice was bought by a relative of Holmes, revealing—with wonderful understatement on Conan Doyle’s part—that the feeling was mutual.

Perhaps the use of a waxwork decoy model of Holmes in “The Empty House” was Conan Doyle’s wry comment on the fame that his detective had garnered by this point. Yet he did not shy away from satisfying his readers, making sure that The Return of Sherlock Holmes ran the gamut of his hero’s talents. “The Dancing Men” features the most fiendish coded message in the canon, while the use of fingerprinting in “The Norwood Builder” was radical for its time. And Holmes’s skill for disguise underpins both “Charles Augustus Milverton” and “The Empty House.”

These stories also often see Holmes hobnobbing with a high-society crowd. In “The Golden Pince-Nez,” there is a tantalizing reference to his having been admitted into the French “Legion of Honour” after he had apprehended “the Boulevard Assassin.” Likewise, two of Conan Doyle’s own favorite tales, “The Priory School” and “The Second Stain,” see Holmes dealing with some highly illustrious personae. Yet Conan Doyle’s aristocrats are not necessarily painted with affection. Lord Holdernesse is deeply implicated in the drama of “The Priory School,” and Sir Eustace Bracknell in “The Abbey Grange” is notable for his violence and alcoholism. The well-to-do “Norwood Builder” Jonas Oldacre, meanwhile, is an out-and-out fiend. As in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the tales in this collection often play out in controlled, out-of-town environments, away from the chaos of London.