Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Final Problem” was first published in 1893.
The story appeared in the December 1893 issue of The Strand Magazine. It presents Holmes’s confrontation with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, where the two appear to plunge to their deaths.
Doyle wrote the story as an apparent ending for Holmes. He wanted to devote more time to other writing, and the dramatic disappearance allowed him to close the detective’s main series. Readers, however, strongly objected to Holmes’s apparent death.
Doyle eventually brought Holmes back in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” published in 1903. That later story explains how Holmes survived and describes his absence as a period spent dismantling Moriarty’s criminal network.