I had a complete Sherlock Holmes volume as a kid, and I've read all of the stories a number of times. This version is still worth buying for the excellent annotations. ( )

For those of us used to the major Holmes novellas like 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', it's easy to neglect the real treasure trove of Holmes mysteries made up of the fifty-six short stories published in the Strand Magazine. Leslie Klinger reproduces them here, faithfully printed in facsimile form, complete with the original illustrations ... and much, much more.

Klinger includes a host of annotations - articles and enigmatic theories contributed by Holmes' scholars over the last century in which they attempt to explain what the great detective was really doing. Holmes has a dedicated band of followers who believe him real, believe him still alive, believe he was actually a woman. There are probably fans who think he is an alien.

If the stories weren't fascinating enough in their own right, Klinger's exploration of the world of Holmes makes entertaining reading ... and provides an ironic commentary on the human condition and the preparedness of people to live life through their heroes ... even fictional heroes.

I can, of course, reveal the obvious - although in all the film versions Holmes and Watson speak with impeccable English accents, it has to be recognised that they were both, in fact, Scotsmen. The assumption of Englishness is merely a finely wrought symphony in irony, courtesy of the author ... a Scot, of course!

Conan Doyle was an artist, a man who helped shape the short story and the cliff-hanger into an art form. He combined a genius for narrative story-telling with the ability to weave characters, characters so convincing they have become real and the subject of speculation in a way few other fictional creatures ever have.

A startling publication - the two volumes run to nearly 2000 pages and come in at slightly below bantamweight. Heavy reading, but a delight all the same. ( )

This book is a wonderful introduction to Holmes, and, for one who has read all the stories, still manages to provide enough material (photos, drawings, articles) on the world inhabited by Holmes and Watson to make it a worthwhile purchase for any mystery lover. Really. Go ahead, toss it at anyone who loves mysteries. They'll start flipping the pages, glancing, glancing, then pause at a photo (perhaps the one of a 19th century submarine). Then of course, one must READ the footnote. And of course, one can't just leave the Bruce Partington Plans in the hands of a mysterious thief... Save up though, these Holmesian bookends are a bit pricey, and there's a third volume out there that features the novellas like The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Awooooooooo... ( )

If you have never read Sherlock Holmes, avoid this set as you would the plague. As the publisher was Norton, I expected something like Gardiner's Annotated Alice or Michael Patrick Hearn's annotations of Huckleberry Finn and The Wizard of Oz. Instead what I got was a bunch of trivial inanities which are the kind of thing that is vastly interesting to those who pretend (or even believe) Sherlock Holmes is a real person, but are useless to those who want to know about the Victorian context (cultural, historical, and literary).

Example: "This pub [in some town] could be the one Sherlock Holmes visited in [one of the novels]."

If this is typical of "Sherlockian scholarship", it has the same relation to real scholarship as Star Trek fans' Memory Alpha
does. At least the Star Trek people don't pretend what they are chronicling is real.

I like Victorian literature, and so was interested in reading Conan Doyle, but the inane annotations spoiled all enjoyment of it. In the end, I just read the text of the stories and novels and ignored the annotations. I wish I had encountered "The Oxford Sherlock Holmes" first. ( )

In this boxed set, Leslie Klinger, a leading world authority, reassembles Arthur Conan Doyle's 56 classic short stories in the order in which they appeared in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century book editions. Inside, readers will find a cornucopia of insights: beginners will benefit from Klinger's insightful biographies of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle; history lovers will revel in the wealth of Victorian literary and cultural details; Sherlockian fans will puzzle over tantalizing new theories; art lovers will thrill to the 800-plus illustrations, which make this the most lavishly illustrated edition of the Holmes tales ever produced. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes illuminates the timeless genius of Arthur Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation of readers. 802 illustrations, 8 pages of color, 650 pages each volume.
[review from Prepolec: bakerstreetdozen.com]