The Red-Headed League
Critique • Quotes
1892 collectionFirst publication
Strand Magazine, 1891
Literature form
Story
Genres
Crime, mystery
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Approx. 10,500 words
Notable lines
I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair.
— First lines
"... for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."
"What are you going to do, then?" I asked.
"To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes."
"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."
"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."
"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he remarked. "'L'homme c'est rien—l'œuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand."
— Last lines
Critique • Quotes
