Sherlock Holmes Reading Order — All 60 Stories in Order (Checklist)

All 60 Sherlock Holmes stories in publication order

The four novels and fifty-six short stories in the order they first appeared in print, with the magazine issue date. Each title links to a summary of the story. To tick them off as you read, open the reading tracker.

A Study in Scarlet (Nov 1887)
The Sign of the Four (Feb 1890)
A Scandal in Bohemia (Jul 1891)
The Red-Headed League (Aug 1891)
A Case of Identity (Sep 1891)
The Boscombe Valley Mystery (Oct 1891)
The Five Orange Pips (Nov 1891)
The Man with the Twisted Lip (Dec 1891)
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (Jan 1892)
The Adventure of the Speckled Band (Feb 1892)
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (Mar 1892)
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (Apr 1892)
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (May 1892)
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (Jun 1892)
Silver Blaze (Dec 1892)
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (Jan 1893)
The Yellow Face (Feb 1893)
The Stockbroker's Clerk (Mar 1893)
The "Gloria Scott" (Apr 1893)
The Musgrave Ritual (May 1893)
The Reigate Squires (Jun 1893)
The Crooked Man (Jul 1893)
The Resident Patient (Aug 1893)
The Greek Interpreter (Sep 1893)
The Naval Treaty (Oct–Nov 1893)
The Final Problem (Dec 1893)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Aug 1901 – Apr 1902)
The Adventure of the Empty House (Oct 1903)
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder (Nov 1903)
The Adventure of the Dancing Men (Dec 1903)
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (Jan 1904)
The Adventure of the Priory School (Feb 1904)
The Adventure of Black Peter (Mar 1904)
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (Apr 1904)
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (May 1904)
The Adventure of the Three Students (Jun 1904)
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (Jul 1904)
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (Aug 1904)
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (Sep 1904)
The Adventure of the Second Stain (Dec 1904)
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (Sep–Oct 1908)
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (Dec 1908)
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (Dec 1910)
The Adventure of the Red Circle (Mar–Apr 1911)
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (Dec 1911)
The Adventure of the Dying Detective (Dec 1913)
The Valley of Fear (Sep 1914 – May 1915)
His Last Bow (Sep 1917)
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone (Oct 1921)
The Problem of Thor Bridge (Feb–Mar 1922)
The Adventure of the Creeping Man (Mar 1923)
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire (Jan 1924)
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (Jan 1925)
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client (Feb–Mar 1925)
The Adventure of the Three Gables (Oct 1926)
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (Nov 1926)
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane (Dec 1926)
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (Jan 1927)
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger (Feb 1927)
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place (Apr 1927)

The four Sherlock Holmes novels in order

A Study in Scarlet (Nov 1887)
The Sign of the Four (Feb 1890)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Aug 1901 – Apr 1902)
The Valley of Fear (Sep 1914 – May 1915)

All nine books in order

A Study in Scarlet (1887, novel)
The Sign of the Four (1890, novel)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892, 12 stories)
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893, 11 stories)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902, novel)
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905, 13 stories)
The Valley of Fear (1915, novel)
His Last Bow (1917, 8 stories)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927, 12 stories)

Where to start: twelve stories for newcomers

Sherlock Holmes stories in chronological order

The order in which the cases took place, following William S. Baring-Gould's chronology in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967), from Holmes's student days to the eve of the First World War.

The "Gloria Scott" (Jul–Sep 1874)
The Musgrave Ritual (2 Oct 1879)
A Study in Scarlet (4–7 Mar 1881)
The Adventure of the Speckled Band (6 Apr 1883)
The Resident Patient (6–7 Oct 1886)
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (8 Oct 1886)
The Adventure of the Second Stain (12–15 Oct 1886)
The Reigate Squires (14–26 Apr 1887)
A Scandal in Bohemia (20–22 May 1887)
The Man with the Twisted Lip (18–19 Jun 1887)
The Five Orange Pips (29–30 Sep 1887)
A Case of Identity (18–19 Oct 1887)
The Red-Headed League (29–30 Oct 1887)
The Adventure of the Dying Detective (19 Nov 1887)
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (27 Dec 1887)
The Valley of Fear (7–8 Jan 1888)
The Yellow Face (7 Apr 1888)
The Greek Interpreter (12 Sep 1888)
The Sign of the Four (18–21 Sep 1888)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (25 Sep – 20 Oct 1888)
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (5–20 Apr 1889)
The Boscombe Valley Mystery (8–9 Jun 1889)
The Stockbroker's Clerk (15 Jun 1889)
The Naval Treaty (30 Jul – 1 Aug 1889)
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (31 Aug – 2 Sep 1889)
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (7–8 Sep 1889)
The Crooked Man (11–12 Sep 1889)
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (24–29 Mar 1890)
Silver Blaze (25–30 Sep 1890)
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (19–20 Dec 1890)
The Final Problem (24 Apr – 4 May 1891)
The Adventure of the Empty House (5 Apr 1894)
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (14–15 Nov 1894)
The Adventure of the Three Students (5–6 Apr 1895)
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (13–20 Apr 1895)
The Adventure of Black Peter (3–5 Jul 1895)
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder (20–21 Aug 1895)
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (21–23 Nov 1895)
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger (Oct 1896)
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire (19–21 Nov 1896)
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (8–10 Dec 1896)
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (23 Jan 1897)
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (16–20 Mar 1897)
The Adventure of the Dancing Men (27 Jul – 13 Aug 1898)
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (28–30 Jul 1898)
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (5–14 Jan 1899)
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (8–10 Jun 1900)
The Problem of Thor Bridge (4–5 Oct 1900)
The Adventure of the Priory School (16–18 May 1901)
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place (6–7 May 1902)
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (26–27 Jun 1902)
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (1–18 Jul 1902)
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client (3–16 Sep 1902)
The Adventure of the Red Circle (24–25 Sep 1902)
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (7–12 Jan 1903)
The Adventure of the Three Gables (26–27 May 1903)
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone (Summer 1903)
The Adventure of the Creeping Man (6–22 Sep 1903)
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane (27 Jul – 3 Aug 1909)
His Last Bow (2 Aug 1914)

✅ Track your reading with the checklist

What it does

🗂️

Three reading orders

Publication order with the original magazine dates, Baring-Gould's chronology of the cases from 1874 to 1914, and a "best first" path of twelve stories.

✅

A checklist that remembers

Tick each story as you finish it. Progress bars fill per collection, and "up next" always points to your next unread story.

🔗

Every story, one click away

Each entry links to its summary page on the site, with the year, the collection and a one-line synopsis. Share your progress or copy it as a list.

How to use it

1
Choose an order: publication, chronological or the starter path.
2
Tick each story as you read it. Filter by collection or hide what you have finished.
3
Copy your list or share a progress link with a fellow reader.

What is the best order to read Sherlock Holmes?

For most readers, publication order is best. It is the order in which Victorian readers met Holmes, and Conan Doyle wrote with that in mind: the Great Hiatus after "The Final Problem" only works if you read it before "The Empty House", and later stories assume you already know Watson, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade.

If you are new to Holmes and want to know quickly whether you will enjoy him, start with the short stories rather than the first novel. "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League" and "The Speckled Band" each take under an hour and show everything that makes the character work. Our twelve-story starter path builds on that, and then hands you back to publication order for the rest.

Chronological order is for a second reading. Watson tells the cases out of sequence, so reading them in the order they happened turns the canon into one long biography, from Holmes's student days in 1874 to his last service for his country in August 1914.

The Sherlock Holmes books in order

The canon is nine books: four novels and five collections of short stories. In publication order: A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), The Valley of Fear (1915), His Last Bow (1917) and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).

The book dates differ from the magazine dates in the list above because almost every story appeared first in a magazine, usually The Strand, and was collected in a book later. One story moved collections: "The Cardboard Box" ran in The Strand in January 1893 but was left out of the British edition of the Memoirs and only collected in His Last Bow in 1917.

About the chronological order

Watson is a careless chronicler. He gives dates that contradict each other, marries at times that do not fit, and sometimes names a weekday that was not that weekday in the year he states. Every chronology of the cases is therefore an argument, not a fact.

This guide uses the best-known one: William S. Baring-Gould's, published in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967). It runs from "The Gloria Scott" in the summer of 1874 to "His Last Bow" on 2 August 1914. Other scholars, among them H. W. Bell, Jay Finley Christ and Leslie S. Klinger, place some cases differently. "The Second Stain", for example, is 1886 for Baring-Gould and 1894 for Klinger, but the broad shape of Holmes's career is the same in all of them.

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Frequently asked questions

What order should I read Sherlock Holmes in?

Publication order is the safest choice, because later stories assume you have read the earlier ones, especially "The Final Problem" before "The Empty House". If you would rather try a few stories first, start with "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League" and "The Speckled Band".

How many Sherlock Holmes stories are there?

Sixty: four novels and fifty-six short stories, all written by Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. Together they are known as "the canon".

What is the first Sherlock Holmes book?

A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in November 1887. It tells how Holmes and Watson met. In story time, though, the earliest case is "The Gloria Scott", which Holmes solved as a student.

What are the Sherlock Holmes stories in chronological order?

By William S. Baring-Gould's dating, the cases begin with "The Gloria Scott" (1874) and "The Musgrave Ritual" (1879), continue with A Study in Scarlet (1881), and end with "The Lion's Mane" (1909) and "His Last Bow" (1914). Switch the tracker to Chronological to see all sixty with dates.

Do I need to read the Sherlock Holmes books in order?

Mostly no. Nearly every story stands alone. The exceptions are "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House", which should be read in that order, and The Sign of the Four, which is best read after A Study in Scarlet.

Where is my reading progress saved?

In your browser's local storage on this device. Nothing is sent to a server. Use "Share progress link" to open the same checklist on another device or to show a friend.

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