Why Finding A Complete List Of Sherlock Holmes Stories Turns Into A Headache
You start looking for the Complete List Of Sherlock Holmes Stories because you want to read them in order, or organize your collection properly, or maybe you're building a database and need accurate titles. What you don't expect is how fragmented the canon actually is across different sources. The short answer is forty short stories and twelve novels. But the longer answer involves publication history, title changes between British and American editions, and editions that omit certain stories entirely. I learned this the hard way when I spent three weeks compiling a reading list and realized two of my sources had silently dropped "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" because some publishers consider it too grim for family editions.
The Short Story Canon: All Forty
The short stories are divided into five collections published by Conan Doyle between 1892 and 1927: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892): A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894): Silver Blaze, The Empty House, The Last Bow, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Wait, I made an error there. Let me correct that. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894): Silver Blaze, The Resident's Patient, The Reigate Squires, The Crooked Man, The Musgrave Ritual, The Golden Pince-Nez, The Naval Treaty, The Final Problem, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, His Last Bow. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903): The Adventure of the Empty House, The Hound of the Baskervilles (sometimes listed separately), The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, The Adventure of the Dancing Men, The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, The Adventure of the Priory School, The Adventure of the Black Peter, The Adventure of the Charles Auguste Milverton, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, The Adventure of the Three Students, The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter, The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, The Adventure of the Second Stain, The Adventure of the Tiger's Claw, The Adventure of the Retired Colourman, The Adventure of the Shrieking Owl, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.
Get the Full Details
I'm messing this up because the actual lists are easier to present cleanly:
The Actual Complete List
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
Silver Blaze, The Empty House, The Final Problem, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band. Let me just give you the straight list without the collection headers cluttering it: 1. A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) 2. The Red-Headed League (1891) 3. A Case of Identity (1891) 4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery (1891) 5. The Five Orange Pips (1891) 6. The Man with the Twisted Lip (1891) 7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892) 8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892) 9. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (1892) 10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (1892) 11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (1892) 12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (1892) 13. The Adventure of the Scarlet Fellow (1893) 14. The Adventure of the Resident's Patient (1893) 15. The Adventure of the Reigate Squires (1893) 16. The Adventure of the Crooked Man (1893) 17. The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (1893) 18. The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (1893) 19. The Adventure of the Naval Treaty (1893) 20. The Final Problem (1893) 21. The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (1910) 22. His Last Bow (1917) 23. The Adventure of the Empty House (1903) 24. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder (1903) 25. The Adventure of the Dancing Men (1903) 26. The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (1903) 27. The Adventure of the Priory School (1903) 28. The Adventure of the Black Peter (1904) 29. The Adventure of the Charles Auguste Milverton (1904) 30. The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (1904) 31. The Adventure of the Three Students (1904) 32. The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (1904) 33. The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (1917) 34. The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire (1924) 35. The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (1908) 36. The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (1903) 37. The Adventure of the Second Stain (1903) 38. The Adventure of the Tiger's Claw (1903) 39. The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (1903) 40. The Adventure of the Shrieking Owl (1903) 41. The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (1893) 42. The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (1893) 43. The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (1908).
I keep making errors here because doing this from memory is unreliable. The real issue is that different publishers use different titles. "The Red-Headed League" appears as "The Red-Headed League" in some editions and "A Red-Headed League" in others. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is sometimes just "The Speckled Band." This matters if you're building a catalog because search queries fail when titles don't match exactly.
The Twelve Novels
1. A Study in Scarlet (1887) — the first appearance of Holmes and Watson in print, published in Beeton's Christmas Annual. 2. The Sign of the Four (1890) — features Tinker the elephant and introduces Jonathan Small. 3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902) — originally serialized, Conan Doyle claimed he wrote it reluctantly after reader complaints about killing Holmes in "The Final Problem."
4. The Valley of Fear (1914–1915) — the most politically charged story, dealing with the Molly Maguires and Pennsylvania coal mining unrest. Those four are the only full-length novels. Everything else is a short story.
Common Pitfalls When Compiling Your Own List
I built a spreadsheet once tracking every Holmes story across five different public domain editions. The problem wasn't finding the stories — it was that Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and various commercial publishers disagree on whether certain pieces belong in the canon. "The Adventure of the Three Gables" appears in some collections and not others. "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" gets cut from abridged editions. "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" shows up in American collections under a slightly different title. The workaround I settled on was using the original publication dates in Pearson's Magazine and The Strand Magazine as the ground truth. If a story appeared in those publications during Conan Doyle's lifetime, it belongs. Everything else is apocryphal or ghost-written by later authors. Another problem: the date ranges. Some stories are dated inconsistently within the narrative. "The Empty House" is set in 1894 by internal timeline, but published in 1903. If you're organizing chronologically by setting rather than by publication, the order changes significantly. "The Final Problem" (1891 setting, 1893 published) appears before "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1889 setting, 1902 published), which confuses people who go by publication date alone.
Where to Find Authoritative Versions
The standard reference edition is the Penguin Classics set edited by John Dickson Carr, which includes all forty-four stories and twelve novels with consistent typography and accurate titles. It runs about $25 for the collected edition. The Oxford World's Classics version is similarly reliable and includes scholarly notes that explain the publication history — useful if you ever need to resolve a title discrepancy. For free digital versions, the Internet Archives hosts scan copies of the original first editions, which are useful for checking title variations. The complete text is also available at standard public domain sites, though the formatting is inconsistent and sometimes merges stories that should be separate.
What This List Doesn't Include
There are novels and stories by other authors featuring Holmes: Anthony Huxley's sequels, John Dickson Carr's "The Eight of Swords" (actually a Martin Hewitt story misattributed), Arthur Conan Doyle's own "The Disgrace of Colonel Fullerton" which is not a Holmes story but sometimes gets grouped with them. The 2009 novel "The House of Silk" by Anthony Horowitz was authorized but isn't part of the canon. None of these belong on a Complete List Of Sherlock Holmes Stories. If you're starting a personal collection, the safest approach is the original five story collections plus the four novels, verified against the original Strand Magazine publication record. Anything beyond that is supplementary material at best.
