The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes . Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set in 1889 largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. Holmes and Watson investigate the case. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his app
One of the most famous stories ever written, [3] in 2003, the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel". [4] In 1999, a poll of "Sherlockians" ranked it as the best of the four Holmes novels. [5]
Dr James Mortimer recounts to Sherlock Holmes in London an old legend of a curse that reportedly runs in the Baskerville family since the time of the English Civil War , when Sir Hugo Baskerville was killed by a huge demonic hound , with the same creature haunting the mires of Dartmoor ever since, causing the premature death of many Baskerville heirs. He reveals that his friend Sir Charles Baskerville, who took the legend of the hound seriously, was found dead in the yew alley of his estate, Baskerville Hal