Nov 04, 2005 09:02 PM
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(Updated Nov 04, 2005 09:29 PM)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Holmes, wrote for us a total of 60 short stories and 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes. These are referred to as THE CANON. This book has them all as a single volume (thank god!)
So how does one introduce Sherlock Holmes when he needs none?
Especially when the detective has become so famous that legends are deeply ingrained and difficult to eradicate! For example dis you know that the words ''Elementary my dear Watson'' were never uttered by Sherlock Holmes even once in the books.
This supposed line from Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in fact doesn't appear in the books at all, but only later in Sherlock Holmes films. Just one of those enduring myths that stick around!
The Sherlock Holmes collection (or, to be more accurate, the Canon) was written during the late 1800's and went quite into the first quarter of the 20th century.
The collection features Holmes as the First Consulting Detective, working against evil forces in London. Among the villains, the most notorious, infamous, vile people in the volume can be listed with certainty as:
Professor Moriarty
The Napoleon of crime
Colonel Moran
The second most dangerous man in London
Charles Augustus Milverton
The worst man in London
During this time, the British rule still held strong over India, an invaluable colonial part of the Empire. Doyle used this fact to add more color and personality to these Holmes' stories in many adventures. That is another reason why I get a funny feeling making me long for the early part of the century lighted by gas lamps, with horse-drawn traps and Victorian manners and formal speech which unfortunately seems rather rare to hear these days :-)
Arthur Conan Doyle penned the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in the last decades of the nineteenth century when Britain was still a nation of ''proud gentlemen'' and T-Shirts were not invented.
The enduring attraction of the Holmes stories is, I believe, not related solely to Holmes unusual power of reasoning but also to the attractiveness of his moral character which is grounded in the era he lived. Not only Holmes, but also the other protagonists in the stories, share a common cultural landscape. Holmes virtues as well as his mental ability create a well-rounded character - morally and intellectually - making him the most loved of all detectives.
Needless to say, his parlor tricks of observation are an essential must for his aura, as are the unmatched plots Conan Doyle made - sadly a lot of pastiches lack in the level of plotting Doyle used to casually produce like clockwork.
Of course Sherlock the man is the most documented creation of fiction complete with biographies and word by word analysis of all branches of Sherlockiana.
Sherlock Holmes, the detective created by the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was born on 6th January 1854. That can be ''deduced'' from this volume! As for women, Holmes could never get over one in particular: Irene Adler. She would always be “the woman” to him.
Many people that knew that Doyle had created Holmes still had trouble believing that he was not real.
Did you know that atleast two US Presidents Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt were great Sherlockians?
Franklin D. Roosevelt told some people that when he visited London he went looking for 221B Baker Street and had half expected to bump into the famous detective.
Holmes has also interested Washington literati and political types at least since his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, toured the city in 1894. Franklin Roosevelt housed his Secret Service agents at the Maryland presidential retreat, Shangri-La, in a cabin named for Holmes's London address: 221B Baker Street.
The fact that some people choose to believe (or play at believing) that Holmes is real and Conan Doyle ''acted as Watson's agent for publication of Watson's memoirs'' is interesting and speaks for a longing unfulfilled by today's mass market smart-alec writers - the reason why this volume is such a priceless treasure.
