The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles Review

Conan Doyle had killed Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893 and spent nearly a decade resisting demands for his return. When he finally relented, he framed The Hound of the Baskervilles as a story from before Holmes’s death — a compromise that turned out to produce the greatest novel in the entire canon.

The setup is one of the most effective in detective fiction. A legend curses the Baskerville family: a demonic hound haunts the moor, and each heir dies in terror and mystery. The latest baronet, Sir Henry Baskerville, has just arrived from Canada to claim his inheritance. Holmes sends Watson to Dartmoor as his eyes and ears, and for a long, atmospheric middle section Watson moves through a landscape of grey fog, isolated manors, escaped convicts, and inexplicable sounds in the night — while Holmes, we eventually discover, is already on the moor, watching from the shadows.

What Conan Doyle achieves here is the seemingly impossible: a detective novel that is also a genuinely frightening gothic story. The rational solution does not dissolve the atmosphere — it reframes it. The moor remains threatening even after we understand the mechanism of the crime, because Conan Doyle has made the place itself a character.

Watson’s solo work in the middle of the novel is one of the underappreciated pleasures of the Holmes canon. Separated from Holmes, he is competent, methodical, and quietly brave — a man who has learned from three years of close observation. The partnership, even in absence, shapes him.

Atmospheric, tightly plotted, and endlessly re-readable, The Hound of the Baskervilles is the rare popular masterpiece that entirely deserves its reputation.

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Publication History

The Hound of the Baskervilles was serialised in The Strand Magazine between August 1901 and April 1902, illustrated by Sidney Paget. It was published as a book by George Newnes Ltd in March 1902. Conan Doyle had killed Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in “The Final Problem” (1893), and public demand for his return had been relentless throughout the intervening years. His solution — framing the Hound as a previously untold case, set before Holmes’s apparent death — was a compromise that satisfied readers while allowing him to delay the full resurrection he was reluctant to make. That full return came the following year in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903).

The novel was conceived after Conan Doyle’s friend Fletcher Robinson told him about the legend of a phantom hound on Dartmoor. The two men visited Devon together, and Robinson received a credit and payment when the story was published — one of the few instances of acknowledged collaboration in the Holmes canon. The Grimpen Mire, Baskerville Hall, and the landscape of the moor are drawn from the real topography of Dartmoor, giving the novel a geographical solidity unusual in detective fiction of the era.

Adaptations

The Hound has been adapted more often than any other Holmes story. The 1939 Universal Pictures film, with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson, established the visual iconography of the Victorian Holmes that dominated popular culture for decades. The 1959 Hammer Horror version with Peter Cushing gave the story a gothic intensity closer to the novel’s atmosphere. Jeremy Brett’s 1988 ITV adaptation, faithful to the original in most respects, is considered by many critics the definitive screen version. The BBC’s Sherlock transposed elements of the story to the contemporary Dartmoor landscape in “The Hounds of Baskerville” (Series 2, 2012).

Why It Remains the Greatest Holmes Novel

Among the sixty Holmes stories, the Hound holds a particular position. It combines the atmospheric qualities of Gothic fiction — the ancestral curse, the lonely moor, the isolated house — with the rational method that Holmes represents. More than in any other Holmes story, the detective’s absence from much of the narrative is itself a structural element: Watson must act alone, and the reader sees him struggle. When Holmes’s presence is finally restored, the relief is not just narrative but almost emotional.

The case voted most representative of Holmes’s method and popularity in reader polls consistently names the Hound as the best of the four novels and among the best of the sixty stories. It is the work that new readers reach for first and experienced Holmes readers return to most.

The Dartmoor Landscape

Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson visited Dartmoor together in 1901, and the novel’s landscape reflects direct observation: the specific features of the Grimpen Mire (based on Fox Tor Mire), the tors, the neolithic settlements, and the geography of Baskerville Hall (possibly based on Baskerville Hall in Clyro, Powys, or Brook Manor in Devon) are all drawn from real places. The accuracy of the geographical detail was noted by Dartmoor-based readers when the novel appeared and has contributed to the tourism the area has received since; the Sherlock Holmes connections to Dartmoor are a feature of the regional tourist economy.

Watson’s Central Role

The novel is unusual in the canon for giving Watson extended solo agency: Holmes is absent for a substantial portion of the narrative, directing events from London while Watson investigates on Dartmoor. Watson’s reports to Holmes — and the reader’s gradual understanding that Holmes is closer than Watson believes — provide the novel’s structural elegance. Watson is not the blundering foil of theatrical adaptation but a careful observer who misses what he cannot yet interpret, which is a different and more interesting failure. The Hound rewards the reader who attends to Watson as seriously as to Holmes.