"Sherlock Holmes Omnibus", containing the complete "Sherlock Holmes" stories (4 novels and 56 short stories) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The contents are:

Novels:


A Study In Scarlet
The Sign of the Four
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Valley of Fear


Short story collections:


The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
His Last Bow
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes



Edit: 28th March 07

Uploaded v2 of the book. Improvements:

1. Shortened titles so they show up properly in the TOC.
2. Replaced the "global" contents list at the start of the file by an initial "Book Index", with each book name linking to a "Contents" page at the start of that book. This makes navigation a lot simpler. If you're not sure which story is in which book, use the TOC.
3. Added a cover picture.

Edit: 9th April 07

Uploaded an additional file, "Sherlock_Holmes_Smaller_Fonts.zip" with smaller fonts than the original, for those who found the original font size too small. I've left the original file there, so you can have whichever you prefer.

Edit: 8 Nov 07

Uploaded v3. This is a complete re-issue of the book with dramatically improved formatting, better layout, and new and improved sources for some of the material. This was the very first eBook I created, and I've learned a lot about how to do it "right" since the original version was issued.

Edit: 19 Nov 07

As stated elsewhere, I've started a careful proofreading against a good printed edition. This version has "A Study in Scarlet" proofread, with literally dozens of errors corrected. Some are significant (spelling mistakes); most are errors in punctuation or capitalization - questions without question marks, missing or suplus hyphens, etc. Uploaded v4.

Edit: 27 Nov 07

Proofed and corrected "The Sign of the Four". Uploaded v5.

Edit: 14 Dec 07

Proofed and corrected "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Uploaded v6.

Edit: 13 Mar 08

Proofed and corrected "The Valley of Fear". Uploaded v7.

Previous download count: 2012

Enjoy!

One problem I've just noticed myself is that, for most of the short stories, all that's visible in the TOC is "The Adventure of...". I think I'll shorten the titles and replace, for example:

Adventure III. The Adventure of the Dancing Men

by simply:

III. The Dancing Men

Does that seem like a reasonable solution?

Wonderful effort Harry. And yes, that sounds like a reasonable solution as most of us would know it as simply "The Dancing Men".

Great! I suggest we share more ebooks like this.
No automatic conversion can match a human and why work on the same things if someone already has?

No automatic conversion can match a human
Agree. My many-years experience with e-books creation shows that it is impossible to write an universal parser which would correct all the errors for all the types of input books. So, if you want a perfectly looking e-book, some manual editing is always needed. For this reason I spend a lot of time writting different BookDesigner tools which allow to simplify and accelerate the manual editing.

I've just uploaded a new, improved, version of the book. New file, and list of improvements, in the initial message of the thread.

:thumbsup:
Thanks!

You're very welcome. I'm a big "Sherlock Holmes" fan, and did this entirely for my own benefit. If other people find it useful too, that's just a "bonus" :grin:

Great work, Harry! It's true - nothing can replace the fine work of the human hand here.

Wow, 8 hour? You surely invested a lot of time in this. Thanks very much harry. This is a great addition to my sony reader library.

It was a slow day at work :grin:.

Harry, I love these works. Thank you very much for putting this together. The ability to carry all of these works in one small reader is worth the price of the unit to me.

I wish that your smallest font was a little smaller but otherwise I am very grateful for your effort.

I wish that your smallest font was a little smaller....:laugh4:

I know you're serious, Stingo, but that struck me as funny. :mad:

Sometimes size matters. ;-)

Now that's even funnier. :grin2:

And I have finally bought a supplement to your book for £20.
Cannot find it in any bookshop on the Internet though . Found only one pic of the book

Again -- Great work Harry! Improvements are well worth it. Thanks.

Harry, let me add my profound thanks too, for the great effort. Just loaded it to the Reader.

I'm especially pleased that it has LARGE type. The very first book where I am happy with a Medium size in landscape. mode Actually, the Large is too large. Never thought I'd live to see the day I'd say that! :D

Harry,

This is my first post to these forums. I bought my reader about a month ago and have had my nose in it since the day I brought it home.

Between larger literature such as Moby Dick, The Magus, David Copperfield and a few others, I have been reading Sherlock Holmes. The edition I had until you posted this was okay, but I had to stop and thank you VERY much for this. Your efforts are well received.

Thank you again!
Seth Williams

Hey, why not give Harry some more Karma. He definitely deserves it for his work! ;)

Love it!

You're very welcome. I'm a big "Sherlock Holmes" fan, and did this entirely for my own benefit. If other people find it useful too, that's just a "bonus" :grin:

Your book is becoming very famous and starting to wander all over the Internet.
It is been in binaries (about 4 different newsgroups) a few days ago ;)

That's great - that's exactly what I created it for, for people to share!

Good stuff, "ol' chap". :D I've been reading this book (collection?) more than my textbooks as of late... guess I need to change that if I want to graduate soon. :huh: Thanks again, Harry!

Thanks Harry. I had a copy I took from Gutenburg months ago that I quickly formatted in Word and loaded up. Yours is much nicer.

Hey Harry, one thing I would suggest on your conversions, like this Sherlock Holmes one, is to turn the font size down a notch or two. The "small" on the Reader is pretty large in your font, people always have the option to scale up from the default size, but not scale down. :)

I even grabbed these Harry, thank you.

Hey Harry, one thing I would suggest on your conversions, like this Sherlock Holmes one, is to turn the font size down a notch or two. The "small" on the Reader is pretty large in your font, people always have the option to scale up from the default size, but not scale down. :)

Could you take a look at one of my later books - eg one of the Jules Verne ones - and see if the font size on that is more to your liking? I use a smaller font size now than I did initially - this was the first book I created, and I've learned a few things since then.

If you prefer the font size on the later books, I'll re-upload the SH with smaller fonts.

I've uploaded another version of the file (in the first message of the thread) for those who prefer smaller fonts. I've left the original there too, so you can have whichever you prefer.

You are genius!

This book is still on my Reader. It is great for filling in the time when you finish one book and don't feel like starting a new novel just yet. Or when you are waiting while your wife shops ....

Yep, mine too. First book I ever created with BD. In fact, very likely pretty much the first book anyone outside Russia created with BD :). Glad to see that it has "lasting value". Even looking at it now, I don't think there's too much I'd change in it.

Version 3 uploaded. Completely re-formatted with new sources for much of the material.

This is an "ongoing" work. If you find typos and have suggestions for formatting improvements, please let me know.

As stated elsewhere, I've started a careful proofreading against a good printed edition. This version has "A Study in Scarlet" proofread, with literally dozens of errors corrected. Some are significant (spelling mistakes); most are errors in punctuation or capitalization - questions without question marks, missing or suplus hyphens, etc. Uploaded v4.

Proof-read and corrected "The Sign of the Four". This was in an absolutely shocking state, with errors in virtually every sentence. I've corrected literally several hundred errors in this book, and I believe it to be now in pretty good shape, although I would not be so bold as to claim that no errors remain. Uploaded v5.

Forgot, sorry - I added a new cover picture, too.

Harry, can you also make imp versions of your books for the ebookwise crowd?

One book that has been on my Reader since it was first posted. One of the few books that I will reread.

Thanks Harry!

Harry, can you also make imp versions of your books for the ebookwise crowd?

No, I prefer not to do so.

Proofed "The Hound of the Baskervilles". This was in excellent shape; I only had to fix a handful of errors, clean up the layout a little, and italicise the words which required it.

Uploaded v6.

I'm curious--are you sure all of the Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain in the US? PG doesn't think so, which is why they have the Case-Book on their Australian servers and not the US ones. If the MobileRead servers are located in the US, there may be a violation of copyright law here.

Actually, there is no violation of copyright here. The server MobileRead is on lives in Canada where the copyright is life+50 same as AU.

OK. But anyone downloading from a US location is violating copyright. So maybe this should be labeled as "Non-US access only" just as PG does.

I just saw that there is warning in the Sticky thread under "Upload Help" telling users they need to make sure that it is legal to download where they reside. Disregard my previous suggestion.

Harry,

Many thanks for this enjoyable treasure trove.:thanks:

WRT proofing errors, I have a few questions for this book specifically (and for all books in general, if anyone knows):

- Are corrections based on the e-text alone useful, or only if checked against the paper source? I.e. is "this looks wrong" worth submitting?
- Are there particular books/stories in this collection that you would like help proofing?
- Do you have a preferred format for corrections to be submitted?

Cheers,
Bob

I'd prefer to just carry on going through this particular book myself, Bob. I'll get there in the end! If you find anything I've missed in the three novels that I've proofed so far, though, then please do let me know!

Both comparisons against paper versions and spotting simple typos are very valuable. One thing to be aware of with SH in particular is that there are minor differences between the British and American texts; I've taken the British text to be my "definitive" version.

I just started reading "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" and it seemed familiar. Using the Kindle search feature, I found that it shares several pages in common with "The Resident Patient." Is this correct?

I've read the whole thing through myself, and there doesn't seem to be any "break" in the story, indicating that something might be misplaced. I've not yet checked this story against a printed version, though, I'm afraid.

Do you have a printed book yourself that you could check against?

I found the scanned passages online at google and the author does appear to have repeated material in the two stories. How odd.

I found the scanned passages online at google and the author does appear to have repeated material in the two stories. How odd.

http://www.sherlockian.net/canon/klinger.html discusses the duplicated text.

Interesting. I guess that Dr. Watson (or his literary agent, Conan Doyle) got a little confused :). Thanks for the link, Sparrow.

Sparrow, thanks.

Harry, if you have free time, it might be nice to add a notes section to the ebook including:

- a mention of the duplicated text
- Sparrow's link
- a link to this thread so people remember where they got the book (took me a few minutes)
- the version number so folks know when there is a newer one
- maybe some credits: you, the scanner, etc.


Cheers,
Bob

Proofed and corrected "The Valley of Fear". This was in a reasonable state, with only a few minor typos. The main thing I've done is restored the original British Edition text (it was previously the American version).

That's all the novels done. On to the short stories now.

Uploaded v7.