Audiobook · read by volunteers
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
Read by TBOL3, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Robin Cotter, Zachary Brewster-Geisz, Kirsten Ferreri, Julian Jamison, J A Carter, Kevin McAsh, J. M. Smallheer, Gesine · 12 chapters · 10 h 17
About the book
A visitor arrives at 221B Baker Street, and within a minute Sherlock Holmes has told him where he has been, what he does for a living and what has gone wrong. That is the pleasure of these twelve stories: the dazzling reasoning, the odd little details that solve everything and the friendship between the detective and his chronicler, Dr Watson. A king with a secret, a club for red-headed men, a woman who is jilted at the altar, a goose with a surprise inside it, a speckled band: each case is complete in itself, and each is a classic. Published in the Strand Magazine in 1891 and 1892, they brought Holmes his lasting fame. Their author, Arthur Conan Doyle, was a doctor by training who wrote them for a magazine audience hungry for a new story each month. Ten voices share this roughly ten-hour recording.
Introduction
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived from 1859 to 1930, featuring his famous detective. They were originally published in the Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892, and they were collected in book form in 1892. The title character was named after the famous American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Holmes is a consulting detective with a remarkable gift for observation and deduction, and Doctor Watson, who narrates most of the cases, is his friend and companion. The stories in this volume include 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 and The Adventure of the Speckled Band, among others. Each one is a separate puzzle, and the short form means that the plots are tight and fast-moving.
Conan Doyle gave the world a model for the modern detective story. Holmes has been adapted for stage, screen and radio countless times, but the original stories, with their gaslit streets and foggy atmosphere, remain a pleasure in their own right.
The recording has 12 sections, one for each story, and lasts just over ten hours. Ten LibriVox volunteers share the reading, and their different voices add variety to the cast of clients, villains and policemen. The stories can be heard in any order, one at a time, which makes the collection ideal for bedtime, commutes and rainy afternoons.
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