Here is a collection of twelve stories Arthur Conan Coyle himself selected as the best adventures of The Great Detective from the 60-story canon. Each is illustrated with vivid, vintage artwork. Doyle published his last tale of Sherlock Holmes in 1927. These twelve stories are presented in the chronological order of the events they recount, as far as can be ascertained. The lead-off story, The Musgrave Ritual, relates an adventure that Holmes had before he met Watson, and is one of the rare stories narrated by Holmes himself. The book ends with The Second Stain, which mentions Holmes's professional career retirement in 1903 (although he would continue to take on the odd case up through 1914) The majority of the illustrations are by Sidney Paget, who famously illustrated the first appearances of these stories in the Strand Magazine, the periodical in which most of the Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared.