A Scandal in Bohemia
Complete textA royal client asks Sherlock Holmes to recover a compromising photograph held by Irene Adler. Holmes and Watson investigate her movements and devise a plan to discover its hiding place. The assignment brings their confidence in observation into contact with someone who has compelling reasons to protect her own future.
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Watson introduces Irene through Holmes’s unusual respect for her, making reputation part of the puzzle before the case begins. Disguise, performance, and assumptions about gender shape the investigation. Look at what the royal client calls a danger and what Irene might call security: the detective’s assignment does not automatically settle whose interests deserve sympathy.
Reading focus
Watch a contest of observation and performance in which protecting a photograph means protecting control over one’s future.
This reading edition contains 8,538 words in 3 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained…
Contents
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Is this the complete A Scandal in Bohemia?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 3 sections and 8,538 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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