The Complete Sherlock Holmes

I put together this project because I wanted all four novels and fifty-six stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon in one clean, simple library.

Here is how the project is structured for anyone who wants to take a look under the hood.

Live Site: Sherlockian

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Overview

This is a Hugo static site containing the complete Sherlock Holmes canon published by Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. Readers can switch between reading chronologically or following the traditional novel/story grouping, and the layout updates automatically.

Project Structure

.
├── config/_default/hugo.yaml    # Site config and parameters
├── content/
│   ├── novels/                  # The four novels, one folder each
│   │   └── <slug>/
│   │       ├── _index.md        # Novel metadata (title, year)
│   │       └── chapter-01.md    # Chapter details
│   └── stories/                 # The five short-story collections
│       └── <slug>/
│           ├── _index.md        # Collection metadata
│           └── <story-slug>.md  # Story details
├── data/
│   └── canon.yaml               # Single source of truth for reading order
├── layouts/
│   ├── _default/
│   │   ├── baseof.html          # Shared head, meta tags, and favicons
│   │   ├── list.html            # Renders chapters or stories
│   │   └── single.html          # Renders a single chapter or story
│   ├── index.html               # Home page
│   └── partials/
│       └── canon.html           # Sortable ledger of all nine works
└── static/
    ├── css/main.css
    └── images/

Front Matter Format

Each content file uses straightforward front matter fields:

Novel or Collection Index (_index.md):

---
title: 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'
year: '1892'
work_type: 'collection' # or 'novel'
layout: 'list'
---

Novel Chapter:

---
title: 'A Study in Scarlet'
chapter: 1
year: '1887'
subtitle: 'Mr. Sherlock Holmes'
layout: 'single'
---

Short Story:

---
title: 'A Scandal in Bohemia'
release_order: 1
year: '1892'
layout: 'single'
---

Files do not need to be in a specific order on disk; the numbers defined in the front matter of stories define their ordering within different collections.

Reading Order

" width="80%"/>

The file data/canon.yaml controls how the site orders everything else. It lists the file paths in sequence:

chronological:
  - novels/study-in-scarlet
  - novels/sign-of-four
  - stories/adventures
  ...

grouped:
  - novels/study-in-scarlet
  - novels/sign-of-four
  - novels/hound-of-the-baskervilles
  - novels/valley-of-fear
  - stories/adventures
  ...

License

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original texts are in the public domain. The source code for this site is available under the MIT License.

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— with apologies to Dr. Watson