Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. First appearing in print in 1887's A Study in Scarlet. Holmes character employs deductive reasoning in solving his cases and he believes that the detective's guiding principle, as he says in The Sign of Four, is: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Holmes first became very popular early in 1891 when the first six short stories featuring the character were published in The Strand Magazine. The character was so well-known that in 1893 when Arthur Conan Doyle killed Holmes in the short story "The Final Problem", the strongly negative response from readers was unlike any previous public reaction to a fictional event. The Strand reportedly lost more than 20,000 subscribers as a result of Holmes's death. Public pressure eventually contributed to Conan Doyle writing another Holmes story in 1901 and resurrecting the character in a story published in 1903.

Many fans of Sherlock Holmes have written letters to Holmes's address, 221B Baker Street. Though the address 221B Baker Street did not exist when the stories were first published, letters began arriving to the large Abbey National building which first encompassed that address almost as soon as it was built in 1932.

In a 2008 survey of British teenagers, 58 percent of respondents believed that Sherlock Holmes was a real individual.

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