The Hound of the Baskervilles: Writing, Publication, and Circulation

The Hound of the Baskervilles places Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes in a family murder case on Dartmoor in Devon, England. Doyle had previously written Holmes's fall into a waterfall in “The Final Problem” in 1893. The new novel reused the character in an earlier case, without immediately having to explain how he escaped. Readers met their familiar detective again, but amid moorland, an ancestral house, and a hound passed down through generations of legend.

Darryl Jones's introduction traces the writing process through Doyle's correspondence: in March 1901, while holidaying in Cromer with journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson, Doyle had already mentioned the work to his mother; the following month he visited his friend in Devon. In the dedication, Doyle personally thanked Robinson for telling him a West Country legend and helping with details. This establishes an exchange of source material, not an unproven claim that Robinson jointly wrote the novel.

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At the beginning, Holmes and John Watson infer a visitor's identity from a walking stick he has left behind. When James Mortimer arrives, he confirms some deductions but corrects their guess about why the stick was presented to him. Reasoning begins with a concrete object but must still be tested against its owner's account, before the narrative moves into an apparently supernatural case.

Mortimer brings a family document dated 1742, recounting the legend of the brutal Hugo Baskerville, killed by a hound after pursuing a woman. The document's date is not the date of the legendary events. The recently deceased Sir Charles believed in the curse and suffered from heart disease; enormous canine footprints near his body connect the old story with a present-day murder. The heir, Henry, comes to London from Canada, soon receives a warning assembled from newspaper words, and then loses boots in succession.

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Holmes initially sends Watson to accompany Henry to the estate. Of the novel's fifteen chapters, Eight and Nine consist of Watson's reports to Holmes, Ten shifts to extracts from his diary, and the narrative then returns to retrospective storytelling. Readers follow Watson as he encounters testimony and hears a hound on the moor, while remaining temporarily unaware of what Holmes knows. Letters and diary entries not only report the investigation but also preserve mistaken judgments within the reading experience.

The butler Barrymore raises a light at night, apparently taking part in a plot against his employer. In fact, he and his wife are supplying food to the escaped convict Selden, her brother. A mysterious man on the moor later turns out to be Holmes, investigating in secret. A suspicious clue need not belong to the same crime, and the things characters hide from one another repeatedly redirect suspicion.

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The investigation gradually focuses on Stapleton, a self-described naturalist. Holmes notices his resemblance to Hugo in a portrait at the house, then links the concealed identity to a motive involving inheritance. Stapleton is himself a descendant of the Baskervilles, who moved nearby and cultivated Charles to acquire the family property. The danger apparently roaming outside the family ultimately comes from within it.

Stapleton makes his wife Beryl pose as his sister so that he can approach Henry. He also promises marriage to Laura Lyons, inducing her to write a letter arranging to meet Charles at night, then prevents her from keeping the appointment. While waiting, Charles is pursued by the hound and dies from terror and heart disease. Beryl's secret warning and Laura's later testimony make the women more than objects of suspicion: they become important in breaking the murderer's control.

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Holmes uses Henry as bait and lies in wait with Watson and Inspector Lestrade. Thick fog reduces their time to react; when the hound attacks, even the detectives are momentarily terrified and save Henry only after firing at it. The novel explains the animal's glow as a phosphorus-containing coating and its tracking as a matter of scent: the murderer does not want a new, unworn boot, but needs an old one. Selden, previously dressed in Henry's old clothes, has also been pursued by mistake and killed as a result.

Stapleton flees toward the Grimpen Mire. The searchers find a discarded boot and the place where the hound was kept, but no body; the narrative accordingly infers that he sank into the bog. In the final chapter, Holmes reconstructs the crime while acknowledging that exposing his client to danger was a failure in his handling of the case. Although the supernatural curse has been explained, Henry's psychological trauma still requires recuperation. Solving the mystery does not erase the harm already done.

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The work entered readers' lives through serialization in The Strand Magazine, followed by a book edition from George Newnes in London in 1902. Jones notes that the book appeared before the serial concluded, allowing readers to discover the answer early. They could wait month by month or read the whole story at once, experiencing suspense differently through the two publishing formats.

In May 1902, the New York Bookman published “More Sherlock Holmes Theories,” recalling that its editors had offered an incorrect solution and received letters supporting or disputing it. Two printed letters attempted to explain the hound's footprints as a character's deformed feet and to involve Selden and others in a revenge conspiracy. The article praised installment endings for arousing curiosity but found aspects of the complete novel's explanation implausible. This contemporary evidence shows that circulation involved more than distributing books and magazines: readers debated from incomplete clues, and enthusiastic participation could coexist with disappointment in the ending.

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