If you ever thought you could never get enough Sherlock Holmes, these are the books for you. Three volumes of 20 pounds each, with the complete novels and short stories. There is nearly as much annotation and commentary as the original text, and they are lavishly illustrated with drawings from the original stories and serializations and other material. It is almost too much, but you can take or leave as much of the supplementary material as you want.

After reading so many Sherlock Holmes knock offs, it was good to go back and read some of the originals. The annotations are really valuable for understanding Holmes' time and place and the connections between to different books. A large and heavy volume though, not a beach read.

This is the Sherlock Holmes equivalent to the Riverside Shakespeare! Huge, dense, and extremely detailed

This was a great companion to my recent Sherlock Holmes binge, in which I listened to A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The illustrations from the original publications and annotations contained in this volume added so much to my enjoyment of those books. It also introduced me to Sherlock Holmes scholarship; dozens of experts have studied and written about Holmes and company and turn-of-the 20th-Century London as if they were actual people instead of the conjuring of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A little dense in places and definitely not a book to tote around - it's large format and feels like it weighs 10 pounds - but very fun to have handy while reading these novels. There are two companion books covering all the short stories.

Why I'm reading this: I'm listening to The Hound of the Baskervilles along with the Mystery, Crime and Thriller Group and wanted to have a print copy handy. I discovered this annotated version at my library - looks like it will be a great companion to the audio.

Ef þú hefur lesið Sherlock Holmes oft og manst eftir því hvernig allt endar er þetta kannski fínt. Aðrir varist. Það eru höskuldar í fótunótunum og inngangsköflunum. Flestir pælingar óspennandi. Ekki.

This Annotated Edition from Norton is exquisite!

After visiting Reichenbach Falls a few months ago, I decided to brush up my Sherlock Holmes, starting at the beginning. So far the first two novels, A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of Four, have been a disappointment. The stories seem to have been written rapidly and inattentively, with a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and the level of writing is just barely so-so. Actions that go beyond the plot--for example Watson's love-at-first-sight of Mary Morstan--are a little embarrassing in their silliness. I'm hoping that things will improve with the short stories. The annotations in this edition are remarkably thorough, with all kinds of lore I didn't know. It seems that Victorian gentlemen ALWAYS carried a walking stick, that you could judge a woman by how perfectly her gloves fit, and that Englishmen didn't carry wallets until the introduction of paper money in 1914. Who knew the date of the first public telephone? Or the novelty of taking cocaine by injection? Certainly not me. On the other hand, the annotations all adopt the Sherlockians' assumption that these are real historical personages acting in the real world--so they are forced to spend a lot of (for me) tiresome effort in explaining away the many inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Highlights,though,are the many illustrations from early editions, often several depicting the same plot-point. It's fascinating to see how skillful and accurate some of them are, and sometimes how clumsy and inaccurate. There are thirteen illustrations of Jonathan Small, the man with the wooden leg in The Sign of Four. It was explicitly his right leg, taken above the knee by a crocodile. Only two of the illustrations get both those things right. One even shows him with no wooden leg at all.

This was a complete surprise as a Christmas gift and what a gift it is! I have already read all the Canon at least once and most many times [ I read the Hound of the Baskervilles EVERY October along with The Scarlet Pimpernell as a birthday gift to myself]. This guy goes into Victorian life and customs and really opens up what sometimes the modern reader is forced to skip over. I could not recomend these 3 editions any more highly.

Study In Scarlet and Sign Of Four are my favorite Holmes stories. A joy to re-read. For the Holmes maniac. Full of good background notes, but these stories stand so well without them.

I read The Hound

Physically, a beautiful presentation—great design, nice slipcase, pretty good page layout—a reminder of why physical books are still where it's at. The Holmes novels are, of course, great entertainment. The annotations were very informative, one drawback for me being that they were written as if Holmes, Watson, et al. were actual historical figures, which was annoying to me but is apparently "a thing" in Sherlockian scholarship. The one other drawback, for casual reading at least, is the immensity of the tome, which could be an annoyance for the person who just wants to read the stories. All the pluses of a nicely-made book outweighed that for me, though.

Se si fosse trattato di un romanzo contemporaneo avrei dato voto 3, ma considerando l'epoca dello scritto, in anticipo sui tempi, il libro merita almeno 4. Ben scritto, storie interessanti (a tratti forse avvincenti), resta pur sempre un classico da gustarsi almeno una volta nella vita. Del resto, come scrive Arthur Conan Doyle stesso:

"La mediocrità non riconosce nulla che le sia superiore; ma il talento riconosce istantaneamente il genio"