Researching Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective created by the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his high observation skills, experience in forensic science, as well as his logical reasoning that borders on the crazy to most who donât know him well. He investigates cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
First appearing in print in 1887's A Study in Scarlet, Sherlockâs popularity became widespread with the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine, beginning with "A Scandal in Bohemia" in 1891. This series eventually totalled to four novels and 56 short stories. All but one are set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras, between about 1880 and 1914. Most are narrated by the character of Holmes's friend and biographer Dr. John H. Watson, who usually accompanies Holmes during his investigations and often shares quarters with him at the address of 221B Baker Street, London, where many of the stories begin.
Although Sherlock isnât the first fictional detective in stories, Holmes is arguably the best known. By the 1990s, there were already over 25,000 stage adaptations, films, television productions and publications featuring the detective, and the Guinness World Records even lists him as the most portrayed literary human character in all of film and television history.
Holmes's popularity hit an all time high to the fact that many belief him to be a real person and not just a fictional character in story books. Fans of the franchise helped create the modern practice of fandom. The character and stories have had a profound and lasting effect on mystery writing and popular culture as a whole, with the original tales as well as thousands written by authors other than Conan Doyle being adapted into stage and radio plays, television, films, video games, and other media for over one hundred years.
The inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes stemmed from Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin which is generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction. Similarly, the stories of Ămile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq were extremely popular at the time Conan Doyle began writing Holmes, and Holmes's speech and behaviour sometimes follow that of Lecoq. Holmes and Watson discuss Dupin and Lecoq near the beginning of A Study in Scarlet.
Conan Doyle repeatedly said that Holmes was inspired by the real-life figure of Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, whom Conan Doyle met in 1877 and had worked for as a clerk. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations. However, he later wrote to Conan Doyle: "You are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it". Sir Henry Littlejohn, Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, is also cited as an inspiration for Holmes. Littlejohn, who was also Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health in Edinburgh, provided Conan Doyle with a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime.
Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in his habits and lifestyle. Described to have a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness, Holmes is an eccentric with no regard for standard tidiness.Â
âin his personal habits one of the must untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. [He] keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece. ... He had a horror of destroying documents.... Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.â
While Holmes can be dispassionate and cold, when pulled into an investigation, he is animated and excitable. He has a flair for showmanship, often keeping his methods and evidence hidden until the last possible moment so as to impress observers.Â
Except for that of Watson, Holmes avoids casual company. In "The Gloria Scott", he tells the doctor that during two years at college he made only one friend: "I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson ... I never mixed much with the men of my year".
The detective goes without food at times of intense intellectual activity, believing that "the faculties become refined when you starve them."
Although Holmes is not the original fictional detective, his name has become synonymous with the role. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories introduced multiple literary devices that have become major conventions in detective fiction, such as the companion character who is not as clever as the detective and has solutions explained to him (thus informing the reader as well), as with Dr. Watson in the Holmes stories. Other conventions introduced by Doyle include the arch-criminal who is too clever for the official police to defeat, like Holmes's adversary Professor Moriarty, and the use of forensic science to solve cases.
The Sherlock Holmes stories established crime fiction as a respectable genre popular with readers of all backgrounds, and Doyle's success inspired many contemporary detective stories. Holmes influenced the creation of other "eccentric gentleman detective" characters, like Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot, introduced in 1920.Â
The phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" has become one of the most quoted and iconic aspects of the character. However, although Holmes often observes that his conclusions are "elementary", and occasionally calls Watson "my dear Watson", the phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" is never uttered in any of the sixty stories by Conan Doyle. One of the nearest approximations of the phrase appears in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" when Holmes explains a deduction: "'Excellent!' I cried. 'Elementary,' said he."
For the 1951 Festival of Britain, Holmes's living room was reconstructed as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition, with a collection of original material. After the festival, items were transferred to The Sherlock Holmes (a London pub) and the Conan Doyle collection housed in Lucens, Switzerland by the author's son, Adrian. Both exhibitions, each with a Baker Street sitting-room reconstruction, are open to the public.
In 1969, the Toronto Reference Library began a collection of materials related to Conan Doyle. Stored today in Room 221B, this vast collection is accessible to the public. Similarly, in 1974 the University of Minnesota founded a collection that is now "the worldâs largest gathering of material related to Sherlock Holmes and his creator". Access is closed to the general public, but is occasionally open to tours.
In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened on Baker Street in London. A private Conan Doyle collection is a permanent exhibit at the Portsmouth City Museum, where the author lived and worked as a physician.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes
