ver a decade ago, I was forced into a debate with a fellow mystery fan who insisted that downloading any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (known affectionately among the faithful as “The Canon”) from that new World Wide Web thing was actually illegal. After all, he said, why would anyone bother buying books if they could get the text for free?

Those were different days, of course. Few people had any knowledge of copyright or intellectual property, and even fewer were familiar with the Web. Times have changed, and now it’s possible for almost anyone to browse through the thousands of books with expired copyrights available on Project Gutenberg, and then download anything that strikes one’s fancy to a computer, a Palm, an iPod or even a disc for the local copy shop to print off. While I don’t believe that squinting at the glare of a digital device will ever replace the intimate experience of a good book, this still opens up many exciting possibilities. Schools can now assign classic literature without concern for non-existent funds, people in far-away places can access books they’ve been hoping to read for years, and –to finally get to my point here– newcomers can sample the original stories of Sherlock Holmes immediately and without cost.

While a quick web search revealed some 300 sites with copies of A Scandal in Bohemia (for example), there are certain places that either demonstrate a genuine care for the author and the material, or act as invaluable repositories for multiple works. Below are but a few. Please note that, if you live in the United States, copyright laws forbid you from downloading or sharing materials that are currently protected. In the case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes, that includes anything written in 1923 or later. If you live in Canada, the United Kingdom, or almost every other place in the world, you don’t have to worry about breaking the law, as all copyrights have expired for all of ACD’s works. (We’ll be talking more about copyright confusion in a later post.) With that little warning in mind, set your browsers to explore these wonderful sites:

• The amazing Camden House site has the full text of the Canon, illustrated with the original artwork.
• Project Gutenburg: Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir - Many of Sir ACD’s works, including most of the Canon, with the exception of the ones still under US copyright.
• 221BakerStreet.org has all of the stories not protected by US copyright, and offers a number of PDF files with the original artwork.
• The Library of the Diogenes Club again contains the Canon stories not under US copyright, as well as numerous other “apocrypha” (items not part of the official Canon, such as ACD’s How Watson Learned the Trick), a variety of Sherlockian scholarly documents, and a handy summary of the Canon.

Besides the mere reading of these tales, digital storage offers other advantages, not the least of which is the ability to search the Canon for quotes, characters, dates and other elusive literary fodder, which is something I do quite often. (Ah, a future post, methinks.)

Next week, we’ll be looking at audio sources of Sherlock Holmes for your listening pleasure, including audiobooks and old time radio plays.