The Adventure of the Gloria Scott

"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott"
Short story by Arthur Conan Doyle
From left to right, Justice Trevor, Victor Trevor, Holmes, and Hudson, 1893 illustration by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Detective fiction short stories
Publication
Published inStrand Magazine
Publication dateApril 1893
Chronology
SeriesThe Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
 
The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk
 
The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott ", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in April 1893, and in Harper's Weekly in the United States on 15 April 1893.[1]

It is chronologically the earliest case in Sherlock Holmes canon. This story is related mainly by Holmes rather than Watson, and is the first case to which Holmes applied his powers of deduction, having treated it as a mere hobby until this time. This is one of numerous Sherlock Holmes stories in which a protagonist is haunted by an old acquaintance for an old crime. The others include "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" "Black Peter", "The Sign of Four", "The Five Orange Pips", "The Resident Patient", etc. It is also one of his many stories that deal with the fate of characters who return to England after having spent time abroad in the colonies of the British Empire.[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Smith 84 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "The Cesspool of Empire: Sherlock Holmes and the Return of the Repressed," Victorian Literature and Culture, 34.1: March 2006, pp. 233-247.