The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of short stories by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, first published on 14 October 1892.

It contains the earliest short stories featuring the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, which had been published in twelve monthly issues of The Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892.

Arthur Conan Doyle began writing while studying medicine at university in the late 1870s, and had his first short story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", published in September 1879.

It was well received, but Doyle was paid little for it; after a sequel novel, The Sign of the Four, was published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, he shifted his focus to short stories.

[3] The stories proved popular, helping to boost the circulation of the magazine,[1] and Doyle was paid 30 guineas each for the initial run of twelve.

[7] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Doyle suggests that the short stories contained in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes tend to point out social injustices, such as "a king's betrayal of an opera singer, a stepfather's deception of his ward as a fictitious lover, an aristocratic crook's exploitation of a failing pawnbroker, a beggar's extensive estate in Kent.

"[1] It suggests that, in contrast, Holmes is portrayed as offering a fresh and fair approach in an unjust world of "official incompetence and aristocratic privilege".

"[32] In his Sherlock Holmes Handbook, Christopher Redmond notes "the Canon provides little basis for either sentimental or prurient speculation about a Holmes-Adler connection.