Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Study in Scarlet (version 2)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
Read by Mark Norman, Phil Chenevert, Simon Evers, TriciaG, Elizabeth Fiedler, David Cummings, Beth Thomas (1974-2020) · 14 chapters · 4 h 16
About the book
A wounded army doctor home from Afghanistan, short of money and looking for a place to live, is introduced to a man who is looking for someone to share rooms. So begins one of the most famous partnerships in fiction. Dr John Watson soon discovers that his new companion, Sherlock Holmes, can tell a stranger’s history from a glance, studies poisons for pleasure, and keeps a peculiar profession of his own: consulting detective. Then a body is found in an empty house in London, with a word scrawled in blood on the wall, and Holmes has his chance to show what his methods can do. Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Holmes novel is a puzzle of clues, disguises and sharp deductions that travels from the foggy capital to a sun-scorched American desert. Seven LibriVox volunteers share the fourteen chapters of this second version. A classic mystery, and the place where it all began.
Introduction
Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 and died in 1930. Trained as a doctor in Scotland, he began writing stories while waiting for patients and went on to become one of the most successful authors of his generation. He later received a knighthood, and he wrote historical novels, science fiction and works on a range of subjects, though his name will always be linked with Sherlock Holmes.
A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887 and is the first story to feature Holmes and Watson. Their meeting, their first lodgings at 221B Baker Street and Holmes’s earliest displays of his reasoning all appear here. Doyle is said to have modelled the detective in part on one of his own medical teachers, a man known for his keen observation. The novel is built in two parts, with the second moving to a very different setting, which surprised many early readers and has often been discussed since.
Some passages, especially those describing a religious community in America, reflect the prejudices and misunderstandings of Doyle’s time, and are best read with that context in mind. Still, the central pleasure of the book lies in the interplay between the two leads, and in the way that clues are laid and then revealed.
This is the second LibriVox version of the novel. It has fourteen chapters, runs for about four and a quarter hours, and is shared among seven volunteer readers. It is an excellent starting point for anyone who wants to meet the world’s most famous consulting detective at the very beginning.
Public domain
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text