more than justa hound dog

The novel, one of four featuring Sherlock Holmes at such length, brought the detective back to life after Conan Doyle “killed him off” in 1893. Holmes had seemingly plunged to his death down the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem.

Holmes’s task in The Hound of the Baskervilles is to solve the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, who died after encountering a spectral “sheep-dog of the moor”.

The inspiration for the tale was widely believed to be Dartmoor, with Conan Doyle’s friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson telling him about the mythical black dog there.

Robinson’s coachman, Harry Baskerville, drove the pair around the moor – and in return it seems his name was entwined in the tale.

But Conan Doyle’s close relationship with his mother Mary has now questioned that assumption. Evidence suggests Mary, who lived in the Yorkshire Dales from 1882 until 1917 and enjoyed folk tales, also told her son of Trollers Gill and the legendary Barguest that lived there.