Books by level / English books
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: reading level, length and free edition
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle is a short stories in English. Our team rates it B1. It runs to 95,934 words with 7,576 different word forms, about 8–16 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.
- Author
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Language
- English
- Level
- B1
- Form
- short stories
- Words
- 95,934
- Different word forms
- 7,576
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 3,431 / 5,658
- Reading time
- 8–16 h
- Free edition
- Standard Ebooks
The world’s first consulting detective and his companion investigate further crimes and mysteries, culminating in a life-or-death struggle with an evil nemesis.
Is The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, you need its 3,431 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 5,658. The median English B1 book in our table needs 702 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is harder than most for its level: number 19 of 21, easiest first.
A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.
Which words should you know before you start?
These are the words that The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.
- singular 35
- knife 29
- handed 27
- cottage 25
- examined 24
- pipe 23
- stables 22
- lamp 21
- nervous 21
- problem 20
- clue 20
- pushed 19
- criminal 19
- client 19
- lawn 19
How does it begin?
“I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go,” said Holmes, as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning.
From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.
How long does it take to read?
| Words | 100 wpm | 150 wpm | 200 wpm | 250 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95,934 | 16 h | 11 h | 8 h | 6.5 h |
Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?
Where can you read it for free?
The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.
To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.
What to read next at B1
English books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Short Stories, Fyodor Dostoevsky: 81,223 words, 3,309 forms for 95%
- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle: 83,631 words, 3,565 forms for 95%
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle: 104,993 words, 3,576 forms for 95%
- Short Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov: 23,196 words, 2,685 forms for 95%
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde: 79,464 words, 3,269 forms for 95%
- My Life and Work, Henry Ford: 93,814 words, 3,009 forms for 95%
See also all English books by level and books at B1 in all five languages.