Before writing The Enola Holmes Mysteries, Nancy Springer had already published books that reimagined Mordred and Robin Hood.
Enola is devastated but eventually discovers elaborate ciphers her mother wrote, which lead her to conclude that she left to live with the Romani people and escape the confines of Victorian society.
When Mycroft, the eldest sibling, insists that Enola attend boarding school and learn to be a proper lady, she runs away to London instead.
Throughout the series, Enola solves numerous missing persons cases, including a rescue of Dr. John Watson, while eluding her brothers' efforts to recapture her.
Dressed as a widow, she runs across Inspector Lestrade, who is working on a case with Sherlock about the disappearance of a young Viscount, Lord Tewkesbury.
After investigating the ransacked lodgings, she abduces that the kidnappers were after a secret message hidden in Mrs. Tupper's old crinoline, the stiffening garment worn underneath the full skirt of a dress.
Sherlock converses with Nightingale, and she reveals the reason behind Enola's escape from her brothers by describing the horrors of boarding schools and corsets.
In the end, the Holmes siblings fully reconcile with the help of a final coded message from their mother, a Spartan scitale decoded using bicycle handlebars.
[6] Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, owns a building in the heart of 19th century London, a place she uses under pseudonyms to front for her investigative work.
Life in 19th-century London affords 17-year-old Lady Cecily little autonomy, and she suffers under the hand of her abusive, social-climbing father, Lord Eustace, who left her with aunts who starve her and cut her off from all she loves.
[8] In May 1890, Enola Holmes is finally fully on her own and, no longer hiding from her older brothers Sherlock and Mycroft, attending classes and occasionally pursuing her chosen profession as a scientific perditorian, a finder of lost things and people.
Wolcott Balestier, the representative of an American book publisher, arrived in London on a singular mission—to contract with English authors for their latest works.
Convinced that evil has befallen Balestier, at the hands of rival American publishers who pirate the works of English authors, he sets the elder Holmes on the trail.
[9] The Enola Holmes Mysteries has been classified as an example of neo-Victorian literature for young adults, in part due to the author's use of Victorian woman's clothes as a method to show female empowerment through the main character.
[10]: 91 For Montz, the corset is one of the main pieces of clothing for Victorian era stories, as "it is both public and private, masculine and feminine, utilitarian and ornamental, necessary and reviled.
[10]: 97 In a paper about Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle Trilogy and Springer's Enola Holmes Mysteries, Sonya Fritz also classifies these series as part of the neo-Victorian movement, and talks about how those stories explore the concept of girl power.
She also notes how, when faced with the prospect of being sent to a finishing school, Enola chooses to run away, which frames her as "a specimen of one of the feminine ideals that can be found in girl power".
[11]: 48 The various disguises used by Enola throughout the series demonstrates the character's understanding of femininity as something "performative rather than essential," specially through her usage of the corset as a place to stash her money, or as a piece of armor.
[11]: 48-49 For Fritz, this subversion of female fashion as disguises or as secret communication offers "simultaneously a representation of the Victorian period and a contemporary model of girl power".
The review also praised the novel for being "fast-paced and suspenseful" as well as its integration of Victorian culture but noted that it "wrap[ped] up a bit briskly".
[17] Carthage College's Center for Children's Literature described the second book as a "solid historical mystery" with a "satisfying and surprising ending" despite being "a bit slow at the beginning".
[22] An unrelated original story was published as the graphic novel Enola Holmes: Mycroft's Dangerous Game by Legendary Comics in 2022, credited to Nancy Springer and writer Mickey George, plus artists Cat Staggs and Giorgia Sposito.
[23] On January 9, 2018, it was announced that Millie Bobby Brown would produce and star as the title character in a film series based on the Enola Holmes books.
[33] Brown was reportedly paid $10 million for her role,[34] making it the highest upfront salary for an actor under the age of twenty as of the release of the film.
[36] On June 23, 2020, the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought a lawsuit in New Mexico against, among others, Nancy Springer, Legendary Pictures, PCMA Productions, and Netflix, citing both copyright and trademark infringement.
[39] Furthermore, the Sherlock Holmes property by Arthur Conan Doyle fully entered the public domain in the United States as of 2023, which permanently ended any possibility of copyright challenges in the future.