The Hound of the Baskervilles

A curse on Dartmoor

Dr Mortimer, a country doctor, brings Holmes an old manuscript about Sir Hugo Baskerville, a wicked squire who was hunted to death on the moor by a monstrous hound. Then he describes the recent death of Sir Charles Baskerville, found near his house with a look of horror on his face, and, close by, the footprints of a gigantic hound. The heir, Sir Henry, is arriving from Canada. Holmes sends Watson with him to Baskerville Hall, in the middle of the bleak moorland of Dartmoor. Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel ran as a magazine serial in 1901 and 1902.

Why it works for learners

Watson carries much of this book alone, through his reports to Holmes and pages from his diary. That means a clear, first-person account with dates, observations and lists of suspects, exactly the kind of text a learner can follow closely. The setting is unforgettable: fog, granite hills, prehistoric stone huts, a deadly bog, a howl in the night. The vocabulary of landscape and weather is concentrated and repeated. The plot is tight, the cast is small, and the tension builds steadily.

Which level to start at

B1 is the natural level, and many A2 readers will manage, especially if they know the story. From B2 you’ll enjoy Watson’s increasingly nervous voice and more of the gothic atmosphere. If this is your first Holmes, you can start here; nothing important depends on the earlier books. Watson’s diary chapters are a good place to try sentence-by-sentence mode, one line at a time with its audio and translation.

Read next

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, twelve shorter cases
• The Sign of the Four, Holmes and Watson in the London fog
• The Woman in White, a Victorian mystery with an equally haunting atmosphere