Oxfam Holmes book fetches £15,500

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859

A book handed into an Oxfam shop which contains the first Sherlock Holmes stories has sold for £15,500.

Study in Scarlet, which features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first two Holmes tales, was donated to a Harrogate, North Yorkshire, branch of the charity.

It beat a guide price of £9,000 during an auction of books given to Oxfam stores at Bonhams in Oxford on Tuesday.

A first edition Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets sold for £360. The 97 lots sold for more than £30,000.

A copy of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings went for £950 but a first edition of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling failed to attract a buyer.

The money raised from the sale will go to fund Oxfam's work around the world.

An Oxfam spokesman said: "There was a bidding war going on between bidders in the US and bidders in the UK for the Sherlock Holmes. It has smashed its reserves.

"This is the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in any book anywhere. It is not only the first edition but the first printing."

Simon Roberts, of Bonhams books, said: "It is extraordinary what emerges from these Oxfam shops.

"It is a snapshot of what people have read and collected over the past century."