The Hound of the Baskervilles

Meet the voices

• Narrator · 旁白 — The warm, calm storyteller who sets the scene.
• Sherlock Holmes · 福尔摩斯 — The famous detective, sharp, dry and secretly fond of his friend.
• Dr. Watson · 华生 — Holmes's loyal friend, a kind doctor who is braver than he thinks.
• Dr. Mortimer · 莫蒂默 — A worried country doctor who brings the case to Holmes.
• Sir Henry · 亨利爵士 — The brave young heir who refuses to be scared away.
• Barrymore · 巴里摩尔 — The solemn butler of Baskerville Hall who hides a family secret.
• Mrs. Barrymore · 巴里摩尔太太 — The butler's wife and the housekeeper of Baskerville Hall, who is sometimes heard crying at night.
• Stapleton · 斯台普顿 — A friendly neighbor on the moor who is mad about butterflies.
• Beryl · 贝丽尔 — The beautiful young woman who lives with Stapleton on the moor and tries to warn the visitors away.
• Mr. Frankland · 弗兰克兰 — An old neighbor who loves lawsuits and watches the moor through his telescope.
• Laura Lyons · 劳拉·莱昂斯 — A young woman in the town of Coombe Tracey who works as a typist.
• Inspector Lestrade · 雷斯垂德 — A grumbling inspector from Scotland Yard in London.
• John Clayton · 约翰·克莱顿 — A puzzled London cab driver who repeats a very odd name.
• Selden · 赛尔登 — An escaped convict, a dangerous man hiding somewhere on the moor.
• Hugo Baskerville · 雨果·巴斯克维尔 — The wicked Baskerville of the 1640s whose crime began the family curse.
• Sir Charles Baskerville · 查尔斯爵士 — Sir Henry's kind old uncle, the master of Baskerville Hall, whose sudden death begins the story.
• Cartwright · 卡特赖特 — A sharp fourteen-year-old messenger boy who runs errands for Holmes in London.
• the Hound of the Baskervilles · 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 — The huge black hound of the old Baskerville legend, said to hunt the family on the moor.

25 chapters in 5 parts

Part 1: The Legend 传说

Part 2: The Heir 继承人

Part 3: The Moor 荒原

Part 4: Who Is on the Moor? 荒原上有谁

Part 5: The Net 收网

Key words in The Hound of the Baskervilles

• 医生 yī shēng: doctor
• 胡子 hú zi: beard
• 旅馆 lǚ guǎn: hotel
• 马车 mǎ chē: cab
• 心脏 xīn zàng: heart
• 报纸 bào zhǐ: newspaper
• 童话 tóng huà: fairy tale
• 线索 xiàn suǒ: clue
• 继承 jì chéng: to inherit
• 妹妹 mèi mei: younger sister

Behind the story

The Hound of the Baskervilles is Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of 1902, first published in parts in The Strand Magazine from August 1901. It is one of the four novels about the detective Sherlock Holmes, and many readers still count it as the best of them. This graded adaptation follows Doyle's fifteen chapters closely over 25, from the walking stick a visitor leaves in Baker Street to the last night on the moor.

Chinese readers have known Holmes in translation for well over a century. In Chinese he is 福尔摩斯 and his friend is 华生, and this book appears there as 巴斯克维尔的猎犬. The tale of a ghostly dog, a family curse and a lonely moor is still a favorite with mystery lovers, and with anyone who likes a scary story told by the fire.

Did you know?

• The idea came from Doyle's friend, the journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who told him an old West Country legend about a ghostly hound. Doyle thanked him for it at the start of the book.
• In Doyle's novel, Dr. Watson tells the story himself, and for several chapters we read his letters to Holmes and his diary from Baskerville Hall.
• The moor in the story is Dartmoor, a real national park in Devon, famous for its stone hilltops, fog and deep bogs.