Before You Begin

Before you begin.

London, 1881: a wounded army doctor returns from Afghanistan with little money, few friends, and no idea that the man who will share his Baker Street rooms is about to change the shape of detective fiction. Sherlock Holmes enters not as a legend but as a baffling new acquaintance—chemist, violinist, boxer, and observer of details everyone else misses.

First published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet is Arthur Conan Doyle’s inaugural Holmes and Watson novel. Its energy comes from discovery: Watson learning how Holmes thinks, the police confronting a room full of impossible clues, and the narrative widening far beyond London to reveal the human histories hidden inside evidence.

The book also bears the assumptions and prejudices of its Victorian moment, especially in its depiction of nineteenth-century Mormon Utah and Indigenous peoples. This edition preserves Doyle’s text while inviting readers to approach those passages as historical fiction shaped by the limited and often hostile sources available to its author.

Begin with the evidence, keep an eye on what Watson notices—and what he does not—and enter the illustrated gallery only when you are ready to follow the first scarlet thread.