Natural speed please
By creating this character, Doyle made an ancestor of modern forensic science and analytical chemistry; the writer also gave an official birth to the detective genre as we know it.
The first story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887 and the second, The Sign of the Four, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine three years later. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two novels published in serial form appeared between then and 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914. In 1893, with the purpose of dedicating his time to his more important historical novels, Conan Doyle tried to get rid of the character of Sherlock Holmes in the story entitled The Last Problem: there the writer introduced an archenemy, Professor Moriarty, who killed Holmes; while fighting, the two fell down the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Public outcry, however, led Doyle first to write The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901), the story of which was set before the tragic accident; then to write The Adventure of the Empty House, where it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies he had preferred to also be temporarily "dead".
Sherlock Holmes stories have been translated into more than fifty languages, and made into plays, films, radio and television series, a musical comedy, a ballet, cartoons, comic books, and advertisement.
