Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle in English with translation

Name: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle is Arthur Conan Doyle's Christmas story about Sherlock Holmes. A lost Christmas goose and a battered hat arrive at Baker Street, and from them Holmes tracks a priceless stolen gemstone through the freezing London streets. The story opens with a careful description of Holmes's room. In the original, the small things Holmes reasons from are named in exact Victorian words.

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Language: English
First published: 1892
Levels: A2 · B1 · B2
Original: C1
Pages: 50

Languages you can read it in: 22

The opening, phrase by phraseExcerpt adapted to B1

I had visited my friendSherlock Holmeson the second morningafter Christmas,because I wantedto wish him a happy holiday.

He was sitting on the sofain a purple dressing-gown,with a pipe-racknear his right handand a pile ofmessy morning newspapers,which he had clearly just read,close to him.

Beside the couchwas a wooden chair,and on the corner of the backhung a very oldand dirty hard-felt hat,which was in bad conditionand broken in several places.

A magnifying lensand a pair of forcepswere lying on the seatof the chair,which suggestedthat the hat had been hung thereso he could examine it.

“You are busy,”⁹I said;¹⁰“perhaps I am interrupting you.”

Phrase notes

⁹“You are busy,”
LiterallyYou are occupied
WhyWatson says "You are engaged" — engaged in the old sense of busy.
¹⁰I said;
LiterallyI said
WhyThe original has "said I", an inverted order common in older narrative.

In the reader, every phrase has a breakdown: what it means and why.

About the text and the author

The story was published in The Strand Magazine in 1892 and collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (George Newnes, 1892). It opens slowly — the dressing-gown, the pipe-rack, the papers, the old hat — and the original is full of period turns: the compliments of the season, much the worse for wear, said I. The excerpt on this page is the first page retold at level A2.

The description and phrase notes were written by AI and checked by a second model, November 13, 2026.

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Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle in English with translation

About the text and the author

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