Four Noncanonical Sherlock Holmes Short Stories: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Four Noncanonical Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, credited to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Four Noncanonical Sherlock Holmes Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Read in English by Peter Yearsley; Michele Eaton; David Purdy; Algy Pug; Alan Mapstone; Rob Marland; Larry Wilson; Zames Curran; Twinkle; Tomas Peter; Lauren-Emma Blake; chuckconvr; Adrian Stephens; Marvin; Lewis West; NoelVox; Brant Burgiss Although the Sherlock Holmes canon traditionally consists of four novels and 56 short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, there are many Sherlock Holmes stories outside the canon. Most of these noncanonical stories were written by authors other than Doyle, but there are four short stories about Holmes written by Doyle that are nonetheless excluded from the canon, for various reasons. This LibriVox album consists of these four noncanonical stories. The first story, "The Field Bazaar", was first published in 1896 in a special issue of a University of Edinburgh student newspaper called The Student. Doyle wrote this very brief story to support a fundraising event at the university, his alma mater, but most scholars consider the story to be a parody and therefore not part of the canon. The second and third stories, "The Lost Special" and "The Man with the Watches", were both published in The Strand Magazine in 1898 and both feature mysteries involving trains. These two stories are not part of the canon because neither story mentions Holmes by name, although literary scholars have proposed that the unnamed "amateur reasoner" in "The Lost Special" and the unnamed "well-known criminal investigator" in "The Man with the Watches" are intended to be Holmes, and this theory is accepted for the purposes of this LibriVox album. Doyle wrote the fourth story, "How Watson Learned the Trick", for a miniature book that was placed in Queen Mary's Dolls' House, a dollhouse built for Queen Mary in the 1920s that housed a tiny library featuring works by several famous authors of the day, the contents of which were published in 1924 for public consumption. Considered a companion piece to "The Field Bazaar" due to both stories consisting entirely of conversations between Holmes and Watson over breakfast, "How Watson Learned the Trick" is similarly excluded from the canon on the grounds of being a parody. - Summary by David Purdy Cast List: Sherlock Holmes: Peter Yearsley Dr. Watson: David Purdy Herbert de Lernac: Algy Pug James: NoelVox James Bland: Lewis West Inspector Collins: Alan Mapstone John Palmer: Brant Burgiss Potter Hood; Dude: Zames Curran James McPherson; John: chuckconvr Edward; Kenyon Junction Station Master: Tomas Peter Sparrow MacCoy; Earlstown Station Master: Adrian Stephens Coroner; Newton Station Master: Lauren-Emma Blake Barton Moss Station Master: Marvin Manchester Station Master: Larry Wilson Collins Green Station Master: Twinkle St. Helens Station Master: Rob Marland Narrator: Michele Eaton Edited by: Peter Yearsley Proof listener: Dulcamara

Recording facts

• Recording title: Four Noncanonical Sherlock Holmes Short Stories
• Author credits: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 4
• Listed recording duration: 1:39:10

Catalogue topics

• private investigators
• gentleman detectives
• deductive reasoning

Track guide

1. 01 - Story 1: The Field Bazaar — 8:21
2. 02 - Story 2: The Lost Special — 48:31
3. 03 - Story 3: The Man with the Watches — 38:27
4. 04 - Story 4: How‌ ‌Watson‌ ‌Learned‌ ‌the‌ ‌Trick‌ — 3:51

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.