it follows the Pinkerton version of the story closely. Sherlockians have enjoyed speculating about which of the coalfield towns — Tamaqua, Pottsville, Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) or Mahanoy City — is the original of “Vermissa.” Bruce Kennedy and Robert Watson Douty explore such questions, and recreate the grim atmosphere of the Valley in those days, in their chapbook In the Footsteps of Birdy Edwards (1980). The Baker Street Irregulars carried out further inquiries during a weekend excursion to the area in 2004, resulting in the publication of an anthology, Murderland, the following year.
But none of this background is apparent in the first half of The Valley of Fear, which begins as a country-house murder mystery with Professor Moriarty lurking in the background. The seven chapters of “The Tragedy of Birlstone” give some scope for a mystery and its solution to develop, and for personal touches of a kind impossible in a short story, such as the curious behaviour of the late John Douglas’s devoted wife. The clue of the missing dumb bell is one of the most amusing, and hence unforgettable, in the whole Canon. Eventually, after the seven “Scowrer” chapters, an “Epilogue” returns the scene to England, and Holmes is seen brooding when — astonishingly — Moriarty is victorious after all.
The Valley of Fear was serialized in the Strand magazine from September 1914 through May 1915, after most of the tales that would later appear in His Last Bow. In the United States it was not carried by Collier’s, but instead appeared in the “Associated Sunday Magazines,” a group of newspaper supplements, beginning on September 20, 1914, and concluding on November 22. In book form it appeared in February in the United States (from George H. Doran Co.), and in June in England (from Smith, Elder & Co.). As Gibson and Green note in their Bibliography, there are a number of deliberate textual variations, some caused by the war with Germany, in which Britain (but not America) was engaged beginning late in 1914, some “for greater accuracy” in the American details.
This fourth collection of Canonical short stories is the smallest of all, containing but eight tales — and that figure includes “The Cardboard Box,” originally published as one of The Memoirs but suppressed from 1894 until this volume appeared in 1917. The stories were somewhat rearranged from the order in which they had been originally published. The British edition was published by John Murray, apparently because Smith, Elder & Co. thought seven or eight stories too few to make a worthwhile book. The American edition appeared simultaneously, from George H. Doran Co. The subtitles of the two editions differ slightly: in Britain it was Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes, and in the United States A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes. Many editions (but not, for example, the John Murray Short Stories) include a one-paragraph Preface signed by Watson: “The friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive and well....”
Shortly after His Last Bow was published, Doyle wrote an article, “Some Personalia about Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” which appeared in the Strand for December 1917. It was later revised as a chapter in his autobiography, Memories and Adventures (1924). Clearly intended as an epilogue to the entire Canon, the existence of this article makes it clear that His Last Bow was intended to be, indeed, Holmes’s last bow. It leaves open, however, the question of which sort of “bow” the author had in mind: the kind an actor takes at a curtain call, or the kind the dying Robin Hood drew to shoot an arrow to his final resting place.
THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE. Like “The Naval Treaty,” the only Canonical short story that is longer, this one was first published in the Strand in two parts: “The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles,” September 1908, and “The Tiger of San Pedro,” October 1908. Collier’s Weekly published the two parts August 15, 1908, under the title “The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles.” The titles for the two parts survive in modern editions; the title “Wisteria Lodge” for the full story was first used when His Last Bow was published in book form. This tale was “a difficult story to write,” Gibson and Green say obiter in their book Bibliography, and it shows, being long and confusing. The horrible face at the window and the shocking relics of voodoo that serve as clues along the way are hardly sufficient to redeem the story, nor is the sudden appearance of “Don Murillo,” the deposed Latin American dictator.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE. A background of Italian-American mafia activity makes this story a favourite with many readers, though its early pages, in which Holmes reassures a distressed landlady and puzzles over the identity of her mysterious lodger, is in fact more typical of the Canon. The “cipher” which proves to be Italian has excited much commentary; whichever way Holmes counted the letters, they don’t seem to come out right. The story was first published in the Strand in two parts, in March and April 1911 (a month later in the American edition), and retains a division into Parts I and II.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS. Mycroft Holmes, last seen in “The Greek Interpreter,” returns in this story, bringing his brother a case which, like two or three others, involves espionage and international intrigue rather than domestic crime. Apart from its supposed political importance, the case is of interest chiefly for the ingenious disposal of a body atop an Underground train — and of course for the presence of the dead man’s fiancée, one of the four Canonical Violets. “The Bruce-Partington Plans” (the title referring to the blueprints for the Bruce-Partington submarine, a thoroughly up-to-date invention in 1908) appeared first in the Strand for December 1908 and Collier’s for December 12 of the same year.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE. The title is sensational; the story is a splendid one, drawing on Doyle’s medical background (and drawing on Watson’s medical mediocrity) to present a Holmes who is feigning fatal illness to ensnare a clever adversary. Such detail is given about the ruse that there is hardly room for the mystery itself, and it is not even quite clear who Victor Savage was or why he was killed. “The Dying Detective” was first published in Collier’s for November 22, 1913, and immediately off printed as a Christmas greeting pamphlet from the advertising department of Collier’s. It also appeared in the December 1913 issue of the Strand.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX. Comedy and Gothic melodrama figure more in this story than in most other Canonical tales — the comedy in Watson’s clumsy attempts to play detective, acting on Holmes’s behalf in Montpellier; the melodrama in Holmes’s frantic prying open of the coffin in which the missing lady is about to be buried alive. The story comes nearer than any other in the Canon to being about rape, rather than murder or theft. Its unusual title (without “The Adventure of”) is no excuse for the faux pas that was made when it first appeared in the United States, in the American Magazine for December 1911; there it was headed “The Disappearance of Lady Carfax.” Under its right name it appeared in the Strand, also for December 1911.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT. As in “The Reigate Squires,” Holmes in this case is taking a medically imposed vacation, this time in Cornwall, and conveniently finds himself in proximity to a mystery. Murder is not at first suspected in “the Cornish horror,” a phenomenon that rather reminds one of a spiritualist seance gone wildly wrong (but Doyle in 1910 was not yet active as a spiritualist). The most memorable aspect of the story may be the hideously contorted faces of the victims of radix pedis diaboli, a root hitherto unknown to science, but its most important feature is the scene in which Holmes holds justice higher than law and lets the culprit go. “The Devil’s Foot” was originally published in the Strand — in December 1910 in the British edition, in January and February 1911 in the American edition. (The first of those two episodes ended with “Hurry — hurry, before things get disarranged.”)
HIS LAST BOW. This story, which gives its title to the collection in which it later
