THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB. Doyle becomes luxuriously gruesome in this story, beginning it in Watson’s consulting-room as he (incompetently) treats an amputation. Then the patient — Victor Hatherley, whose profession of engineer was just the new thing for a smart, practical young man in the 1890s — tells the story of how he lost his thumb to a meat cleaver, and Holmes identifies the crime and the criminal for whom the attack on Hatherley was a mere incident. The story was first published in the Strand for March 1892.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR. One can hear an echo of Doyle’s early social and romance tales in this story, which first appeared in the Strand for April 1892. The title is a novelty, for there is no acknowledged bachelor in the story. At its centre is a society wedding; in the background, events no less romantic that took place in the American west. Holmes, seeming not to share the Victorian impression of America as uncouth, speaks of the future “quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes” as the hope for civilization. The story includes such other beloved details as Holmes’s snub of a nobleman who suggests that the detective has not worked at such a social level before (“No, I am descending”) and the arrival of “ancient and cobwebby bottles” to accompany a catered supper at 221B Baker Street.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET. Unusual for being set amid snow, this tale — which first appeared in the Strand for May 1892 — is one of several jewel-theft adventures in the early Canon. It also has a spicy sexual subplot, and brings Holmes into indirect contact with one of those mysterious quasi-royal personages who figure in several of the stories. How plausible it is for any such personage to pawn state property (with a most respectable banker) for private advantage, and how plausible it is for a corner to break off such a coronet with an audible crack, it may be best for the reader not to inquire.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES. This next of the “damsel in distress” tales, published in the Strand for June 1892, presents the first of the “four Violets,” women — more or less distressed — who share that given name and appear in Holmes’s cases. Violet Hunter, the governess puzzled about a household where she is compelled to cut off her beautiful red hair, is in fact a strikingly strong and interesting woman, whom writers have sometimes imagined as a possible mate for Holmes. The story is an admirable venture into the Gothic genre, with its isolated house, intimations of madness in the attic, feminine fear, and final bloodshed.
THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
A second series of twelve “adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” as they were first called, appeared in the Strand beginning in December 1892 and continuing through December 1893. Again, the American edition of the Strand carried them a month later, and they also appeared shortly afterwards in Harper’s Weekly (except for “The Final Problem,” which was published in McClure’s as well as in the Strand).
As soon as the series was complete, it was published in book form as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The first American edition, from Harper & Brothers, contained all twelve of the 1892–93 stories, but the first British edition, from George Newnes, Ltd., omitted “The Cardboard Box,” which was then dropped from all subsequent book editions of The Memoirs, including a “second issue” from Harper in September 1894.
THE ADVENTURE OF SILVER BLAZE. Set against the irresistibly colourful background of horse racing, and provided with some of the most dramatic dialogue anywhere in the Canon, this story is a favourite and has been dramatized often. It provides the “dog in the night-time” incident, which in non-Sherlockian contexts is the most frequently quoted of Holmes’s sayings, and for Sherlockians it provides the vexing mathematical puzzle of the train whose speed Holmes could calculate to the nearest one-half mile per hour, as well as many interesting anomalies in the details of racing colours and regulations. Further, in the original publication, it provides the most popular of all Sidney Paget illustrations, showing Holmes and Watson in their railway carriage, in classic poses. The story, first published in the Strand for December 1892, and reprinted in Harper’s Weekly for February 25, 1893, has a surprise ending of a kind that could hardly be improved upon.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARDBOARD BOX. First published in the Strand for January 1893, and Harper’s Weekly for January 14 of that year, this story involves fine detective work and a very satisfactory outcome. It also involves a double murder (the severing of the victims’ ears, a mutilation of the kind Doyle used again and again in his writings, is particularly grotesque) and one motivated by sexual jealousy. Presumably for such reasons, Doyle chose to suppress the story soon after its publication, not to restore it for twenty-three years. He told an acquaintance in 1903 that “a tale involving sex was out of place in a collection designed for boys.” Later he called it “sensational” and (which it is not) “weak.” It may well be that his real reason for suppressing the story was its grimness; unlike most detective stories, it has nothing like a happy ending.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE YELLOW FACE. This tale, first published in the Strand for February 1893 and Harper’s Weekly for February 11, 1893, is one of the less popular of the early stories, perhaps because Holmes’s attempts at detection in it are utterly unsuccessful. The background references to the American South are less convincing than those in “The Five Orange Pips,” and what it says about relations between the races makes many readers uncomfortable. The story’s greatest strength is probably its picture of life in London’s rapidly growing outer suburbs.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE STOCK-BROKER’S CLERK. The Strand in March 1893 and Harper’s Weekly for March 11, 1893, presented this tale of a clever robbery and a man who impersonates his own brother. It uses a theme that had already appeared in “The Red-Headed League” — distracting an innocent man with highly paid busy-work to allow thieves to have a clear shot at their booty. Perhaps because much of the action takes place in inelegant Birmingham, or because Hall Pycroft the clerk is so colourless, the story is not highly regarded.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ‘GLORIA SCOTT.’ After ten brief paragraphs of introduction, this tale (first published in the Strand for April 1893 and Harper’s Weekly for April 15, 1893) is told entirely in the voice of Holmes, reminiscing before the fire. It is as though the author, two years into his writings about Holmes, felt the need for some novelty. What he introduces is a flashback to the detective’s youth, specifically to the incident that led him to make detective work his career. Like so many of the stories, the matter turns out to have its origin in distant regions and long-gone years — in a mutiny aboard a ship en route to Australia’s penal colonies. The detection is of little interest, though there are some fine minor deductions about the person of old Trevor, and the most memorable aspect of the case in fact is the amusing if improbable cipher in which an important message is conveyed.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL. A month after “The ‘Gloria Scott,’” in May 1893, the Strand presented a second story about Holmes’s college years, one with many strong features. It also appeared in Harper’s Weekly for May 13. This tale offers royalty, sexual intrigue, a first-rate antagonist for Holmes in the person of butler Brunton, and the “ritual” itself, a series of solemn questions and answers, so easily memorized, so hard to forget. Although the solution to the puzzle is somewhat artificial, involving trigonometry and arbitrary pacing of distances, the climactic scene in which a corpse is found under the flagstones of Hurlstone Manor is a fine one.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE REIGATE SQUIRES. This tale, set among the gentry of Surrey, appeared first in the Strand