All Scandal in Bohemia

Scandal in Bohemia

The Adventure of a Scandal in Bohemia (dated by Watson specifically to March 1888) is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in July 1891 and takes place sometime after the events of ‘The Sign of Four’. It contains the wonderful Holmes putdown of Watson as ‘You see but you do not observe’ and other unforgettable statements as ‘I am lost without my Boswell’, ‘It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs’ and ‘It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data’. Holmes and Watson are visited by the King of Bohemia who wishes Holmes to recover from a former opera diva, Irene Adler, incriminating papers relating to their former relationship before his own engagement of marriage is announced. Holmes constructs a cunning plan to recover the documents from her London residence in St John’s Wood but is outwitted by Irene Adler who he refers to thereafter as ‘the woman’.