LoveReading4Kids Says
May 2010 Guest Editor Philip Ardagh comments:
I discovered the 'consulting detective' Sherlock Holmes when I was about nine and have remained hooked ever since. I've written a humorous adult book using some of the original Strand magazine illustrations. Not long ago, I was on BBC Radio 4 taking listeners on a journey around the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London. I return to the books for pleasure with regularity. The short stories make fantastic reading for children, with a clear beginning, middle and end, along with plenty of excitement, logical deduction and pure hokum. Sherlock Holmes has many imitators, but he's the original and best.
John Walsh, author and Independent columnist: "Irresistible puzzle-solving tales of the chilly Victorian master-sleuth and his dim medical sidekick."
LoveReading4Kids
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes AND The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Synopsis
This collection includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue and evil in such cases as The Speckled Band', in which a terrified woman begs their help in solving the mystery surrounding her sister's death, or A Scandal in Bohemia', which portrays a European king blackmailed by his mistress. In Silver Blaze' the pair investigate the disappearance of a racehorse and the violent murder of its trainer, while in The Final Problem' Holmes at last comes face to face with his nemesis, the diabolical Professor Moriarty - 'the Napoleon of crime'.
About This Edition
About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Iain Pears, Ed Glinert
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh,
Scotland. The Doyles were a prosperous Irish-Catholic family, who had a
prominent position in the world of Art. Charles Altamont Doyle,
Arthur's father, a chronic alcoholic, was the only member of his
family, who apart from fathering a brilliant son, never accomplished
anything of note. At the age of twenty-two, Charles had married Mary
Foley, a vivacious and very well educated young woman of seventeen.
Mary Doyle had a passion for books and was a master storyteller. Her
son Arthur wrote of his mother's gift of "sinking her voice to a
horror-stricken whisper" when she reached the culminating point of a
story. There was little money in the family and even less harmony on
account of his father's excesses and erratic behavior. Arthur's
touching description of his mother's beneficial influence is also
poignantly described in his biography, "In my early childhood, as far
as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me
stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life."
After Arthur reached his ninth birthday, the wealthy members of the
Doyle family offered to pay for his studies. He was in tears all the
way to England, where for seven years he had to go to a Jesuit boarding
school. Arthur loathed the bigotry surrounding his studies and rebelled
at corporal punishment, which was prevalent and incredibly brutal in
most English schools of that epoch.
During those grueling years, Arthur's only moments of happiness were
when he wrote to his mother, a regular habit that lasted for the rest
of her life, and also when he practiced sports, mainly cricket, at
which he was very good. It was during these difficult years at boarding
school, that Arthur realized he also had a talent for storytelling. He
was often found, surrounded by a bevy of totally enraptured younger
students, listening to the amazing stories he would make up to amuse
them.
More About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Iain Pears, Ed Glinert