"Case Book Of Sherlock Holmes, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

[obi/Doyle/Case.Book]
This text is in the Public Domain.

Preface
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
The Problem of Thor Bridge
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
The Adventure of the Three Gables
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place



PREFACE
THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

I fear that Mr. Sherlock Holmes may become like one of those popular
tenors who, having outlived their time, are still tempted to make repeated
farewell bows to their indulgent audiences. This must cease and he must
go the way of all flesh, material or imaginary. One likes to think that there
is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange,
impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the
belles of Richardson, where Scott's heroes still may strut, Dickens's
delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray's worldlings continue
to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of
such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while
some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the
stage which they have vacated.
His career has been a long one -- though it is possible to exaggerate it;
decrepit gentlemen who approach me and declare that his adventures
formed the reading of their boyhood do not meet the response from me
which they seem to expect. One is not anxious to have one's personal
dates handled so unkindly. As a matter of cold fact, Holmes made his
debut in A Study in Scarlet and in The Sign of Four, two small booklets
which appeared between 1887 and 1889. It was in 1891 that "A Scandal
in Bohemia," the first of the long series of short stories, appeared in The
Strand Magazine. The public seemed appreciative and desirous of more,
so that from that date, thirty-nine years ago, they have been produced in
a broken series which now contains no fewer than fifty-six stories,
republished in The Adventures, The Memoirs, The Return, and His Last