A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is a detective novel by the British author Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1887. It marks the first appearance of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson, the pairing that would become one of literature's best-known detective duos. The book's title comes from a speech in which Holmes describes his own investigative method as tracing the "scarlet thread of murder" running through the "colourless skein of life." The story first appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and attracted little attention at the time; Conan Doyle went on to write 56 Holmes short stories but only four full-length Holmes novels, of which this was the first, followed by The Sign of the Four in 1890. It is also credited as the first work of detective fiction to feature a magnifying glass as an investigative tool.