The Hound of the Baskervilles was first serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902 (nine monthly instalments), with illustrations by Sidney Paget. The first book edition was published by George Newnes, London, in March 1902, priced at 6s. The novel was Conan Doyle’s return to Holmes after killing the detective at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893 — though the story is set before Holmes’s “death” (in 1889), allowing Doyle to resurrect his creation without immediately acknowledging he had changed his mind.
The Novel
Sir Charles Baskerville has been found dead on the grounds of Baskerville Hall, Dartmoor — his face frozen in terror. Local legend speaks of a gigantic spectral hound that has plagued the Baskerville family since the seventeenth century, when the dissolute Sir Hugo Baskerville was torn apart by a hell-hound while pursuing a peasant girl across the moor. Sir Henry Baskerville — the new heir, arriving from Canada — receives a warning: “Keep away from the moor.”
Holmes sends Watson to Dartmoor to protect Sir Henry and investigate. The moor is magnificently evoked — a landscape of bogs, granite tors, rain, and mist that becomes the novel’s true antagonist. Watson encounters escaped convicts, eccentric neighbours, mysterious figures, and (eventually) the hound itself — “an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” Holmes, supposedly in London, has been hiding on the moor all along.
The novel is the longest and most atmospheric of the four Holmes novels — and the one that best integrates the detective formula with genuine literary achievement. Dartmoor is rendered with a power that transcends genre; the Gothic atmosphere is sustained across 200 pages without breaking; and the solution (the hound is real but natural — phosphorus-painted to glow) satisfies while leaving the supernatural atmosphere undissipated.
Collecting The Hound of the Baskervilles
First edition (1902, George Newnes, London): Priced at 6s.
Identification points:
- Published by George Newnes Limited
- Red cloth boards with gilt lettering and black hound design
- Sixteen illustrations by Sidney Paget
- “First Edition” — no reprinting statement
First edition:
- Fine copy in original red cloth: $15,000–$40,000
- Very Good: $5,000–$15,000
- Reading copy: $1,000–$3,000
The Strand Magazine serialisation (1901–1902): Complete set of nine issues: $3,000–$8,000 for clean copies. Individual issues: $200–$800.
First American edition (1902, McClure, Phillips):
No dust jacket was issued for the first edition (or if one existed, no copy has survived). The book’s value is in the cloth binding’s condition — the gilt lettering and the black hound stamped on the cover.
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 1.5× for fine copies. Holmes collecting is a mature, stable market with institutional and private demand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this set before or after Holmes’s death? Before. The story is dated to 1889 — four years before the Reichenbach Falls incident. This allowed Conan Doyle to write a new Holmes story without formally resurrecting him (that came later, in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” 1903).
Is the hound supernatural? No — the novel’s solution is rational. But Conan Doyle maintains supernatural ambiguity throughout: the moor itself seems haunted, and the story’s atmosphere resists the tidiness of the explanation.
Is this the best Holmes story? Many Sherlockians consider it so — the combination of Gothic atmosphere, sustained narrative, and detective reasoning makes it unique in the canon. Others prefer the concentrated brilliance of the short stories.