The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Published 1892 · 337 pages · 104,479 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Mystery & Crime

How hard is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to read?

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes scores 28 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
Victorian prose, accessible for its era. Medical and scientific terminology filtered through Watson's lay narration.
Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
Clean Victorian prose. Watson's narration is clear and conversational by 19th-century standards.
Abstraction: 30 out of 100
Logic, observation, and deduction. The themes are demonstrated through method rather than argued philosophically.
Information density: 40 out of 100
Twelve distinct cases with varied settings and characters. Dense with clue-planting and red herrings.
Narrative indirection: 30 out of 100
Watson's narration provides a limited perspective—Holmes explains only at the end. Classic misdirection.
Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
221B Baker Street as the temple of reason. The fog as London's mystery. Holmes as logic incarnate. Conventional symbolism.
Ironic distance: 25 out of 100
Watson's admiration creates gentle irony. Holmes's eccentricities are presented with affectionate humor.
Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
Each story resolves completely. Holmes explains, the mystery is solved. Classic detective-story closure.
Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
Twelve standalone stories with a consistent formula. Client-investigation-revelation structure.

How The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is regarded

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes holds a literary regard score of 77 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (183 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes scores 57 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.
Symbol: Literal & Descriptive
You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.
Mythos: Comedy iii (Normal Comedy) (comedy iii)
Mr. Fowler and Miss Rucastle were married, by special license, in Southampton the day after their flight
Genre: Novel + Romance
since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences

Where the story of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes takes place

  • London, the 1880s (1881 to 1890), the main setting
  • Victoria goldfields and the Reconstruction South (backstories) (1860 to 1869)
  • Baker Street and London, 1883-1890 (1883 to 1890)
  • Provincial England: Herefordshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Kent (1883 to 1890)

5 things that are true of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with the passage for each

  1. Holmes says there are seventeen steps up to his rooms, to show Watson 'sees' but does not 'observe'.

    Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.

  2. The Redheaded League pays four pounds a week for the nominal work of copying out the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

    Is to copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  3. The warning in The Five Orange Pips is five dried orange pips sent by post.

    out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate.

  4. The swamp adder in The Speckled Band kills within ten seconds of biting.

    He has died within ten seconds of being bitten.

  5. The Beryl Coronet is said to carry thirty-nine beryls.

    There are thirty-nine enormous beryls,

Scenes in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that Frye would name

55 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, The Man with the Twisted Lip
"Let me introduce you," he shouted, "To Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent." Holmes's sponge strips off the beggar's face and reveals the missing husband.
Anagnorisis, A Case of Identity
"Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the door. "I let you know, then, that I have caught him!" The suitor Hosmer Angel is recognized as the stepfather Windibank.
Anagnorisis, The Speckled Band
"It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "The deadliest snake in India." The 'speckled band' of the dying cry is revealed as the serpent.
Sparagmos, The Copper Beeches
There was the huge famished brute, its black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the ground. The villain is torn apart by his own hound.
Pathos, The Five Orange Pips
The body exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident Openshaw's death, filtered through a newspaper report, is the story's sacrificial blow.
Anagnorisis, The Blue Carbuncle
"The game's up, Ryder," said Holmes quietly. The thief is identified and confronted with the stone from the goose.

Books that share these scenes with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

About the author

Arthur Conan Doyle