The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes of the Speckled Band" as his overall favourite. Arthur Conan Doyle began writing while studying medicine at university in the late 1870s, and had his first short story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", published in September 1879. After eight years, "A Study in Scarlet", Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story, was published by Ward Lock & Co. The novel was well received, but Doyle was paid little for it, and despite a sequel novel, "The Sign of the Four", which was published in Lipincott's Monthly Magazine, he shifted his focus to short stories. In early 1891, the first editor of "The
Sherlock Holmes pastiches literature. In January 1928, the short story "My Dear Holmes" was published in "Punch, or the London Charivari". The sub-title of the story was: "His positively last appearance on earth." Written from the point of view of Holmes, it starts out in the usual way, and then ends rather lamely with no mystery presented or solved, but Holmes dead of incautiously (and improbably) sniffing excessively at a bottle of an anesthetic ("A.C.E.") he has asked Watson to bring with them on an errand. Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian Conan Doyle, wrote—in a joint effort with John Dickson Carr—twelve Sherlock Holmes