The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is the third Sherlock Holmes novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. On the moors of Devon, a legendary demon hound seems to haunt the Baskerville family, and Holmes and Watson must find the human hand behind the curse.
The story
Dr Mortimer brings Holmes the legend of a spectral hound that has pursued the Baskervilles since the seventeenth century, and the news that Sir Charles Baskerville has died of fright on the moor. The heir, Sir Henry, arrives from Canada and is warned to stay away.
Holmes sends Watson to Baskerville Hall, where an escaped convict, a strange naturalist named Stapleton and lights on the moor deepen the mystery, until Holmes reveals that he has been watching from the moor all along.
The return of Holmes
Conan Doyle had killed Holmes in 1893, in The Final Problem. The Hound, serialised in The Strand Magazine in 1901–1902, is set before that death, but readers greeted it as a resurrection.
Its success helped persuade the author to bring the detective back for good in 1903.
Dartmoor
The novel draws on the bleak landscape of Dartmoor, with its granite tors, prehistoric huts and dangerous bogs such as the fictional Grimpen Mire.
It has been filmed and adapted more often than any other Holmes story, from silent cinema to Hammer's 1959 version and the BBC series Sherlock.
Anecdotes
A friend's idea
Conan Doyle credited his friend the journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who told him Dartmoor legends of a phantom dog, with the idea for the novel.
Queues at the newsstands
When the serial began in The Strand, the magazine's circulation reportedly rose by some thirty thousand copies, and readers queued for each new instalment.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Hound of the Baskervilles set before or after Holmes's 'death'?
Before: the story takes place before The Final Problem.
Where does the novel take place?
Mostly on Dartmoor, in Devon.
Is the hound supernatural?
No, Holmes reveals a very human plot behind the legend.