Stupid Nitpick Regarding Dex's Excellent Sherlock Holmes Column

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Did Sherlock Holmes Really Exist?

There seems to be a great deal of confusion concerning the exact title of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes mystery. Dex has it as The Sign of Four, which would agree with the title of this paperback edition, but my Sherlock Holmes anthology has it as The Sign of the Four, which is how the title appeared when it was first published in Lippencott’s. (Picture).

In addition, during the course of that adventure, and in recollections occuring in several subsequent adventures, both Holmes and Watson refer to the case as The Sign of the Four.

Ergo, I deduce that the proper title is, in fact, The Sign of the Four, and that all books bearing the erroneous title be immediately burned.

Elementary, my dear Dex.

:wink:

2

Well… The first appearance of the story was as The Sign of the Four, in both the English and American Lippincott’s of February 1890. It was published in book form in the spring of 1890, as The Sign of Four, which Conan Doyle preferred to call it, according to Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, p 14.