Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892. First US edition, second state, with 16 plates (complete). Publisher's full light-blue cloth stamped in gilt, with Gordian Knot emblem stamped in black on front. Octavo. 306 pages, 4 ads. Plate for page 250 is loose, just visible starting to full-title page, starting to cloth corners, edge-wear most notably on spine ends, lightly foxed throughout, visible soling near bottom of fore-edge text block but not on the interior pages. Still, a Good copy with a structurally sound binding minus the single loose plate.

This is the very first collection of short stories featuring the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, and the third major appearance of him. The emblem on the cover, used only for the early US editions, is something of a seal held together by a knotted rope, with the Gordian Knot ("Gordius Nodus") and sword transfixed at its center. Famously Alexander the Great, when tasked against "unknotting" the impossible knot, had simply... cut it in two with his sword. As, for the emblem, there are keys shown on the clasps it begs a question on how to solve challenging puzzle, with the answer being something entirely unique to how it would normally be perceived: a trait that the detective within the book was renowned for. 

This copy was published simultaneously (or very near) with the true first edition (London) for the US. This is visible by the year, 1892, on the copyright page and the lack of "the" in the title. The book being a second state is visible on page 65, where an error on line 10 reads with a exclamation in the middle of the sentence ("of ! and"). Had it been a first issue page 65 would also have "if had"; here it was corrected to "if he had".