Nine of Conan Doyle’s books are on this shelf: seven Sherlock Holmes volumes published between 1887 and 1915, plus two historical adventures, The White Company and The Lost World.
Holmes arrived in a short novel, not a story collection, and that is still the cleanest way in.
Doyle’s nine books here are really two careers. Seven are Sherlock Holmes, from A Study in Scarlet in 1887 to The Valley of Fear in 1915, and two are the historical novels he considered his serious work, The White Company (1891) and The Lost World (1912). He spent decades trying to be remembered for the second group and was remembered for the first.
The Holmes volumes are uneven in shape: two short novels, one long novel (The Hound of the Baskervilles), and four collections of stories. The collections can be read in any order and the stories in any order within them; the novels cannot. If you are choosing by time, a collection is five hours, the Hound is three, and The White Company is eight.
Start here: A Study in Scarlet. A Study in Scarlet is 43,000 words, about two hours, and it introduces Holmes and Watson at the moment they meet, which no later book has to do again.
Arthur Conan Doyle: which book first
Every Arthur Conan Doyle title on editions.ink, with the reading time for each. The first row is the one to start with.
| Book | Year | Words | Read time |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Study in Scarlet — start here | 1887 | 43,000 | 2 h |
| The Sign of the Four | 1890 | 43,000 | 2 h |
| The Valley of Fear | 1915 | 57,665 | 3 h |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | 1902 | 59,000 | 3 h |
| The Lost World | 1912 | 80,000 | 4 h |
| The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes | 1894 | 94,259 | 5 h |
| The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | 1892 | 106,000 | 6 h |
| The Return of Sherlock Holmes | 1905 | 112,155 | 6 h |
| The White Company | 1891 | 151,000 | 8 h |
| All nine | 746,079 | 41 h |
What to read after the first one
- The Sign of the Four — the second Holmes novel, same length, tighter plot
- The Hound of the Baskervilles — the one everybody names, and the best of the full-length cases
If you would rather see the whole shelf in chronological order first, the Arthur Conan Doyle books in order page lists every title by publication year with the same word counts. The Arthur Conan Doyle author page collects all the editions in one place,, and the author index has the other writers on the site. If you want a follow-up by a different author, the read next guide pairs ten classics with what to read after them.
Questions readers ask
What is the first Sherlock Holmes book?
A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. It is 43,000 words and introduces Holmes and Watson as flatmates.
Should I read the Holmes books in order?
You can start anywhere, but the two short novels (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four) work best first, then the four story collections.
Are the Sherlock books free here?
Yes, all seven volumes plus The White Company and The Lost World are free DRM-free downloads.