Sherlock Holmes Appears in A Study in Scarlet

In 1886, a twenty-seven-year-old medical practitioner named Arthur Conan Doyle drafted a short crime novel while running a general practice in Southsea, Hampshire. Initially titled A Tangled Skein, the narrative chronicled the encounter and joint tenancy of Dr. John Watson, a wounded veteran returning from the Second Anglo-Afghan War, and Sherlock Holmes, an eccentric consulting detective based at 221B Baker Street. After several publishing rejections, Conan Doyle sold the story outright for twenty-five pounds to the firm Ward, Lock and Company. The work appeared in print under the title A Study in Scarlet within the pages of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, accompanied by illustrations by David Henry Friston.

The novel established literary history by introducing Holmes and Watson, pairing Watson's observational bewilderment with Holmes's methodical deduction. At the first crime scene, Holmes examines the room with a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass. Within the text, the title itself stems from Holmes describing an investigation into an uninjured corpse in an abandoned Brixton Road residence as his personal study, comparing the task of justice to isolating and exposing a scarlet thread of murder that runs through the otherwise colorless fabric of ordinary existence.