and Transcriptions
IV. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Life and Medical Career
Literary Work
General Interests
Spiritualist Interests
Posterity
Biographical Writings
V. THE VICTORIAN BACKGROUND
London
Public Affairs
Money and Social Class
Daily Life
Higher Pursuits
The Empire and the World
Who’s Who
VI. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
British Law
Policing and Detection
Detective Stories
VII. HOLMES IN MODERN MEDIA
Pastiches and Parodies
Theatre
Radio
Film
Television
Other Media
VIII. FANS AND FOLLOWERS
The Baker Street Irregulars
Sherlockian Life
Overseas
The Printed Word
The Internet
IX. A LASTING INFLUENCE
Memorials
The Common Image
Academic Scholarship
The Appeal of Sherlock Holmes
Appendix: The Sixty Tales
Index
HARDLY A VILLAGE LIBRARY anywhere is without some volume of Sherlock Holmes. Hardly a cartoon or show business figure has never dressed up in “deerstalker” hat and magnifying glass to communicate instantly to a universal audience that here is the great detective, known to North American toddlers as “Sherlock Hemlock” and to late-night movie watchers as the hyperactive, overcoated Basil Rathbone. If the creator of Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, was once identified as “the best-known living Englishman,” Sherlock Holmes has a claim to be the best-known Englishman who never — quite — lived.
Everyone who is literate knows Sherlock Holmes, if only vaguely, and those who do may someday wish to know more. A few enthusiasts already know far, far more, to the point that they exchange trivia at the regular meetings of Sherlock Holmes societies from Tokyo to Toronto. When it first appeared in 1993, this book was intended for both kinds of people, and — despite the development of the Internet in the meantime — I respectfully doubt that any more comprehensive tool for either group has appeared. For the enthusiasts, the Sherlockians, this new edition may serve as a key to larger libraries, including their own shelves as well as to the burgeoning online library of Sherlockiana. It has been designed, too, as a ready reference for information currently scattered in often inaccessible places in the great Sherlockian literature. I hope it will stand beside the chief printed reference works for Sherlockians and the leading online sites. For general readers, it may be of use as a companion to The Complete Sherlock Holmes, or to whichever smaller volume of Holmes stories may be at hand. For a few of them it may even become an enticement into the Sherlockian world that has been my home for as long as I can remember.
By no means could I hope to include all knowledge about Sherlock Holmes in a single volume. But the essential facts are here, along with generalizations that provide a context for them, and a good many indications about what else has been said or written for those who want to know more. I welcome corrections, comments, and suggestions, and I am grateful to the many readers who provided such responses to the first edition (especially Roger Johnson, who kindly wrote that the book contained “an astonishingly tiny number of errors in such a densely-packed text”).
I hope the style of these pages makes it clear that I take the stories of Sherlock Holmes seriously, but enjoy them at the same time. It would be a pity not to take them seriously, for they demonstrate such insight, and can teach us so much. It would be a disaster not to enjoy them as five generations have already done. As entertainment they generally speak for themselves, but perhaps this book will be a little help for those who hope to understand better the language in which Sherlock Holmes, and Arthur Conan Doyle, make themselves known, a language that is increasingly different from the one we encounter every day.
In 1993 I noted that the writing of this book had depended on many sources. At my elbow, I wrote, I had kept the Canon itself, and two essential reference books: Good Old Index, by William D. Goodrich, and the Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle edited by John Michael Gibson and Richard Lancelyn Green. Beside them stood, as sixteen years later they still stand, Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana and the Ronald DeWaal World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, as well as annotated editions of the sixty stories — the difference being that at the time there was one such edition of importance, edited by William S. Baring-Gould, and now there are four.
“Rarely,” I continued then, “have I managed to write a paragraph without jumping up to consult some other volume: perhaps Steinbrunner and Michaels’s The Films of Sherlock Holmes, Hugh Harrington’s privately printed Canonical Index, Bigelow on Holmes, the indexes to the Baker Street Journal, and Bill Rabe’s 1962 Sherlockian Who’s Who and What’s What.” In this year’s revision, too, I have consulted those and many other books, of which the most important new arrival is Starring Sherlock Holmes by David Stuart Davies. “Practically every other volume on my shelves,” I wrote, “was needed at least once during the several months in which I drafted the pages that follow.” Between 1993 and the present my study has moved two storeys upward, but most of my books have not, and I cannot count the number of trips I have made down the stairs to the shelves and up again to the keyboard.
Many individuals, too, have been of great help. In 1993 I acknowledged Cameron Hollyer and Victoria Gill; I must now add Peggy Perdue, their successor at the Arthur Conan Doyle
