Watson’s wife (or wives) is one of the big points of contention among Holmes nuts. Some people claim that there’s evidence that W was married three times.
Myself, I’m a fundamentalist: Watson was married once, to the charming Mary Morstan, whom he met in The Sign of Four 
But where did she go?!
So she really did just disappear? I wonder if some forgotten love from her time in [Canada/America/South Africa] sent her a cryptic message one night on the back of a one-eyed gopher, and she mysteriously disappeared after having supper with her maid, who turned out to be stealing jewelery to help her prison-escapee mentally retarded brother escape to Australia?
ISTR that there is some mention by Watson himself that his wife had died and that he had thereafter moved back into 221B Baker Street. But the question of how many times Watson was married is matched only by the question of the bodily location of his Afghan War wound for sheer vexatiousness.
One Sherlockian scholar even noticed that Watson’s wife once calls him James rather than John, and from that surmised that his middle initial “H.” stands for Hamish, the Scottish equivalent of James, thus inferring that she was Scottish.
And of course, both the late Prof. Moriarty and his brother are named James… :rolleyes: 
There’s a mention in one story of Holmes having heard of Watson’s “sad bereavement”, which some have chosen to interpret as Mary’s death. But to Fundamentalists like myself;), it means that John and Mary lost a child.
Incidentally, the Doctor’s romantic life was the subject of this earlier thread. 
Here are Conan Doyle’s personal faves of 1927:
Conan Doyle was also pretty proud of “Silver Blaze”, which incidentally is the source of the most famous Holmes quote of all, something to do with dogs in the nighttime.
The brothers were named Prof. and Col. James was their middle name.
Yes, and it’s a very good story, even though the author later conceded he’d made so many errors about horse-racing that he would probably be “warned off the turf.”
You know, I have to admit: I have never heard that explanation before. 
You can find these, each with fawning commentary, in a book called The Baker Street Dozen edited by P. J. Doyle and E.W. McDiarmid. Very cheap used.
They also throw in “Silver Blaze.”
Barnes and Noble publishes a nice 2-volume hardback edition of the complete Sherlock holmes for about 5 or 6 bucks each. I bought the first one, really liked A study in Scarlett, then read some of the short stories, then got bored and quit about halfway through Baskervilles.
I was listening to this on an old audiobook on cassette tapes, and when I got to that section I has just put a new tape in and was convinced I must have gotten a random tape from a different audiobook. I found the whole middle section very boring, and rather off-putting.
I agree the short stories are the best.
PDF facsimiles of some of the original publications (with notes) can be found here:
http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/archive.html
http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/readings.html
Well their father WAS the famous Victorian-era prizefighter George Foreman Moriarty…
Hah! I did the same thing! It was only the voice of the narrator that convinced me I wasn’t going crazy. I did like them, though. I just went through the Holmes canon, and I’m planning on checking out the rest of Doyle’s stuff, since I rather liked his American detours, as ridiculous as they sometimes were (apparently everyone from America has gangsters and/or long lost husbands-children-lovers following them).
Hey, it’s Conan Doyle’s birthday (1859) - huzzah!
I hope you won’t mind one more comment. (Sorry for coming to the discussion late. Man! I’m away from the Dope for a few days and two great Holmes threads come up.)
For starting (or restarting) reading of the Holmes stories, I would suggest getting a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and read them in order. (Or get a complete Sherlock Holmes and start with the short stories.) I’d suggest skipping the longer stories (A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of the Four) until a little later.
The first two stories are ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and ‘The Red-Headed League’, the top two from the list that TWDuke listed. This series of stories should get you hooked if anything will. Leave the commentary, annotations, side essays and pastiches until you decide you wish to go past moderate interest, if that should happen.
What got me hooked on Sherlock Holmes was the Jeremy Brett series. I thought the script writing was brilliant until I picked up a cheap edition of the Adventures and realized the best lines were lifted directly from Doyle. What got me hooked on The Dope was Dex’s Staff Report mentioned by Thudlow Boink in post #7.
And, by the way, today (May 22, 2009) is the 150th anniversary of Arthur Conan Doyle’s birth in Edinburgh. (Damn, scooped by Elendil’s Hair as I was writing. :shakes fist: )
Because there doesn’t look like there’s been a specific answer to mnemosyne’s query:
She’s dead. As alluded to upthread, in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” the first story set after Holmes’ “death,” Watson notes that Holmes has learned of “[his] own sad bereavement,” and offers “a piece of work for us both to-night,” which is “the best antidote to sorrow.” And that’s just about the last we hear of Mary.
–Cliffy
Read my responses in the linked thread for why this simple statement isn’t necessary true, although I believe it is.