SHERLOCK HOLMES READING April 17, 2007 Marco Barricelli of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival & the American Conservatory Theatre will offer a FREE dramatic reading of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” Tuesday, April 17 7:30-9:00 p.m. Kresge Auditorium Stanford University

Welcome, Readers and Friends!

We at Stanford University are happy to welcome you back to our ongoing journey through the 19th century. In 2007, we will continue our rerelease of selected Sherlock Holmes tales by Arthur Conan Doyle. Travel with us as we plumb the riches of Stanford Library's Special Collections, and savor these tales just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine. This year's project is the fifth in a series of reissued works, which began with three Dickens novels, Great Expectations in 2003, A Tale of Two Cities in 2004, and Hard Times in 2005, and continued in 2006 with selected Sherlock Holmes stories, including The Hound of the Baskervilles. (All are available to you by clicking Archived Novels.)

Sherlock Holmes – the name conjures up mysterious visions of dark London nights, fog swirling through sinister alleyways, horses' hooves clattering against damp cobblestones. The master of deduction and his partner, Dr. Watson, have become cultural icons, living on well beyond their 19th-century origins in scores of stories, plays, and films. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, their creator, soon realized that the pair had taken on a life of their own. Try as he might to kill Holmes or to retire Watson, their reputations – and the public's hunger for their next adventure – lived on and gained immense popularity. Now you can discover them in their original form.

From January through April 2007, Stanford will republish a dozen of the greatest stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon, accompanied by notes, illustrations, and suggestions for further exploration that will enhance your reading experience. Join us, as we revisit these riveting tales: "The Empty House, "Silver Blaze," "The Musgrave Ritual," "The Reigate Squires," "The Greek Interpreter," "Charles Augustus Milverton," "The Abbey Grange," "The Second Stain," "The Bruce-Partington Plans," "The Devil's Foot,"  "The Dying Detective," and "His Last Bow."  

If, for a nominal price, you would like to receive paper facsimiles of twelve weekly Strand Magazine releases, please sign up on our website. Or, you may prefer to download the facsimiles as pdfs from the website, free of charge.   Each installment will be available on successive Fridays under the Sherlock Holmes Adventures link above.

We encourage you to subscribe and/or donate to this ongoing community reading project. Your donation will be used to ensure that this project reaches everyone who wants to participate.

Many thanks to Stanford Continuing Studies, which has supported and funded this project from the beginning, and to our generous partners: Stanford Alumni Association and Stanford University Libraries, and to many of our readers who have generously given to this project.

Associate Dean and Director, Master of Liberal Arts Program
Director, Discovering Dickens
Director, Discovering Sherlock Holmes