THE LIFE AND WORKS

OF SHERLOCK
Ishika Pattnaik
HOLMES Class VIII-B
Roll No.:18
Subject: English
Introduction
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective created by British
author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting
detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with
observation, forensic science, and logical reasoning that borders on
the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide
variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
Sherlock Holmes is presented through the viewpoint of his friend, Dr
John Watson, who acts as the narrator of all his adventurous stories.
Watson describes him as a sharp and highly intelligent individual.
The greatest of all fictional detectives, Sherlock Holmes, along with
his loyal, somewhat obtuse companion Dr. Watson, made his first
appearance in Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Conan Doyle’s novel A Study
in Scarlet (1887) and continued into the 20th century in such
collections of stories as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) and
the longer Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). So great was the appeal
of Sherlock Holmes’s detecting style that the death of Conan Doyle
did little to end Holmes’s career; several writers, often expanding
upon circumstances mentioned in the original works, have
attempted to carry on the Holmesian tradition.

Personality and habits

Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in his habits and lifestyle.
Described by Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles as having a
"cat-like" love of personal cleanliness, Holmes is an eccentric with no
regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In
many of the stories, Holmes dives into an apparent mess to find a
relevant item. In "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", Watson
says:
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Although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most
methodical of mankind ... [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.
The detective starves himself at times of intense intellectual activity,
such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"—wherein,
according to Watson:
[Holmes] had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his
peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit
himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron
strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.
While the detective is usually dispassionate and cold, during an
investigation he is animated and excitable. He has a flair for
showmanship, preparing elaborate traps to capture and expose a
culprit (often to impress observers). His companion condones the
detective's willingness to bend the truth (or break the law) on behalf
of a client—lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into
houses—when he feels it morally justifiable, but condemns Holmes'
manipulation of innocent people in "The Adventure of Charles
Augustus Milverton". Holmes derives pleasure from baffling police
inspectors with his deductions and has supreme confidence—
bordering on arrogance—in his intellectual abilities. While the
detective does not actively seek fame and is usually content to let
the police take public credit for his work,[38] he is pleased when his
skills are recognised and responds to flattery.[26]
Except for that of Watson, Holmes avoids casual company. In "The
Adventure of the Gloria Scott", he tells the doctor that during two
years at college he made only one friend: "I was never a very sociable

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fellow, Watson ... I never mixed much with the men of my year". The
detective is similarly described in A Study in Scarlet.
As shooting practice during a period of boredom, Holmes decorates
the wall of his Baker Street lodgings with a "patriotic" VR (Victoria
Regina) in "bullet-pocks" from his revolver. Holmes relaxes with
music in "The Red-Headed League", taking the evening off from a
case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin. His enjoyment of vocal
music, particularly Wagner, is evident in "The Adventure of the Red
Circle".

Knowledge and skills

Shortly after meeting Holmes in the first story, A Study in
Scarlet (generally assumed to be 1881, though the exact date is not
given), Watson assesses the detective's abilities:

 Knowledge of Literature – nil.

 Knowledge of Philosophy – nil.
 Knowledge of Astronomy – nil.
 Knowledge of Politics – Feeble.
 Knowledge of Botany – Variable. Well up
in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of
practical gardening.
 Knowledge of Geology – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance
different soil from each other. After walks, has shown me
splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and
consistence in what part of London he had received them.
 Knowledge of Chemistry – Profound.
 Knowledge of Anatomy – Accurate, but unsystematic.
 Knowledge of Sensational Literature – Immense. He appears to
know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
 Plays the violin well.

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  Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.
 Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Museums
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 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened on Baker Street in
London, followed the next year by a museum in Meiringen dedicated
to the detective. A private Conan Doyle collection is a permanent
exhibit at the Portsmouth City Museum, where the author lived and
worked as a physician.
In addition to the Holmes canon, Conan Doyle's 1898 "The Lost
Special" features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" intended to be
identified as Holmes by his readers. The author's explanation of a
baffling disappearance argued in Holmesian style poked fun at his
own creation. Similar Conan Doyle short stories are the early "The
Field Bazaar", "The Man with the Watches", and 1924's "How
Watson Learned the Trick", a parody of the Watson–Holmes
breakfast-table scenes. The author wrote other material, especially
plays, featuring Holmes. Much of it appears in Sherlock Holmes: The
Published Apocrypha, edited by Jack Tracy; The Final Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes, edited by Peter Haining; and The Uncollected
Sherlock Holmes, compiled by Richard Lancelyn Green.
In terms of writers other than Conan Doyle, authors as diverse
as Anthony Burgess, Neil Gaiman, Dorothy B. Hughes, Stephen
King, Tanith Lee, A. A. Milne, and P. G. Wodehouse have all written
Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Notably, famed American mystery
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writer John Dickson Carr collaborated with Arthur Conan Doyle's
son, Adrian Conan Doyle, on The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, a
pastiche collection from 1954. In 2011, Anthony Horowitz published
a Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk, presented as a
continuation of Conan Doyle's work and with the approval of the
Conan Doyle estate. A sequel, Moriarty, followed in 2014.
Some authors have written tales centred on characters from the
canon other than Holmes. M. J. Trow has written a series of
seventeen books using Inspector Lestrade as the central character,
beginning with The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade in 1985. Carole
Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler series is based on "the woman" from "A
Scandal in Bohemia", with the first book (1990's Good Night, Mr.
Holmes) retelling that story from Adler's point of view. Martin
Davies has written three novels where Baker Street housekeeper
Mrs. Hudson is the protagonist. Mycroft Holmes has been the subject
of several efforts: Enter the Lion by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M.
Wright (1979), a four-book series by Quinn Fawcett, and
2015's Mycroft, by former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. John
Gardner, Michael Kurland, and Kim Newman, amongst many others,
have all written tales in which Holmes's nemesis Professor
Moriarty is the main character. Anthologies edited by Michael
Kurland and George Mann are entirely devoted to stories told from
the perspective of characters other than Holmes and Watson.
Laurie R. King recreated Holmes in her Mary Russell series (beginning
with 1994's The Beekeeper's Apprentice), set during the First World
War and the 1920s. Her Holmes, semi-retired in Sussex, is stumbled
upon by a teenaged American girl. Recognising a kindred spirit, he
trains her as his apprentice and subsequently marries her. As of
2018, the series includes sixteen base novels and additional writings.
The Final Solution, a 2004 novella by Michael Chabon, concerns an
unnamed but long-retired detective interested in beekeeping who
tackles the case of a missing parrot belonging to a Jewish refugee
boy. Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005) takes place
two years after the end of the Second World War, and explores an

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old and frail Sherlock Holmes (now 93) as he comes to terms with a
life spent in emotionless logic; this was also adapted into a film,
2015's Mr. Holmes.
There have been a host of scholarly works dealing with Sherlock
Holmes, some working within the bounds of the Great Game, and
some written with the understanding that Holmes is a fictional
character. In particular, there have been three major annotated
editions of the complete series. The first was William Baring-Gould's
1967 The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. This two-volume set was
ordered to fit Baring-Gould's preferred chronology, and was written
from a Great Game perspective. The second was 1993's The Oxford
Sherlock Holmes (general editor: Owen Dudley Edwards), a nine-
volume set written in a straight scholarly manner. The most recent
is Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (2004–05), a
three-volume set that returns to a Great Game perspective.

Popularity
The popularity of Sherlock Holmes has meant that many writers
other than Arthur Conan Doyle have created tales of the detective in
a wide variety of different media, with varying degrees of fidelity to
the original characters, stories, and setting. According to The
Alternative Sherlock Holmes: Pastiches, Parodies, and Copies by Peter
Ridgway Watt and Joseph Green, the first known
period pastiche dates from 1893. Titled "The Late Sherlock Holmes",
it came from the pen of Conan Doyle's close friend, J. M. Barrie.
A common pastiche approach is to create a new story fully detailing
an otherwise-passing canonical reference (such as an aside by Conan
Doyle mentioning the "giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the
world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex
Vampire"). Other adaptations have seen the character taken in
radically different directions or placed in different times or even
universes. For example, Holmes falls in love and marries in Laurie R.
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King's Mary Russell series, is re-animated after his death to fight
future crime in the animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd
Century, and is meshed with the setting of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu
Mythos in Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" (which won the
2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story). An especially influential
pastiche was Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a
1974 New York Times bestselling novel in which Holmes's cocaine
addiction has progressed to the point of endangering his career. It
was made into a film of the same name in 1976 and popularised the
pastiche-writing trend of incorporating clearly identified and
contemporaneous historical figures (such as Oscar Wilde, Aleister
Crowley, or Jack the Ripper) into tales featuring Holmes, something
Conan Doyle himself never did.

In 1934, the Sherlock Holmes Society (in London) and the Baker
Street Irregulars (in New York) were founded. Both are still active,
although the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 and
revived in 1951. The London society is one of many worldwide who
arrange visits to the scenes of Holmes adventures, such as the
Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.
The two societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more, first
in the U.S. (where they are known as "scion societies"—offshoots—
of the Baker Street Irregulars) and then in England and Denmark.
There are at least 250 societies worldwide, including Australia,
Canada (The Bootmakers of Toronto), India, and Japan (whose
society has 80,000 members).[85] Fans tend to be called "Holmesians"
in Britain and "Sherlockians" in the United States, though recently
"Sherlockian" has also come to refer to fans of the Benedict
Cumberbatch-led BBC series regardless of location.

Conan Doyle modeled Holmes’s methods and mannerisms on those

of Dr. Joseph Bell, who had been his professor at the University of
Edinburgh Medical School. In particular, Holmes’s uncanny ability to
gather evidence based upon his honed skills of observation
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and deductive reasoning paralleled Bell’s method of diagnosing a
patient’s disease. Holmes offered some insight into his method,
claiming that “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” His detecting
abilities become clear, though no less amazing, when explained by
his companion, Dr. John H. Watson, who recounts the criminal cases
they jointly pursue. Although Holmes rebuffs praise, declaring his
abilities to be “elementary,” the oft-quoted phrase “Elementary, my
dear Watson,” never actually appears in Conan Doyle’s writings. (See
also Sherlock Holmes: Pioneer in Forensic Science.)

Watson’s narrations describe Holmes as a very complex and moody

character who, although of strict habit, is considerably untidy. His
London abode at 221B, Baker Street, is tended by his housekeeper,
Mrs. Hudson. Holmes appears to undergo bouts of mania and
depression, the latter of which are accompanied by pipe smoking,
violin playing, and cocaine use. Throughout the four novels and 56
short stories featuring Holmes, a number of characters recur,
including the bumbling Scotland Yard inspector Lestrade; the group
of “street Arabs” known as the Baker Street Irregulars, who are
routinely employed by Holmes as informers; his even wiser but less
ambitious brother, Mycroft; and, most notably,
his formidable opponent, Professor James Moriarty, whom Holmes
considers the “Napoleon of crime.”
Claiming that Holmes distracted him “from better things,” Conan
Doyle famously in 1893 (“The Final Problem”) attempted to kill him
off; during a violent struggle on Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls, both
Holmes and his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, are plunged over the
edge of the precipice. Popular outcry against the demise of Holmes
was great; men wore black mourning bands, the British royal family
was distraught, and more than 20,000 readers cancelled their
subscriptions to the popular Strand Magazine, in which Holmes
regularly appeared. By popular demand, Conan Doyle resurrected his
detective in the story “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903).

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Holmes remained a popular figure into the 21st century. Among the
most popular stories in which he is featured are “The Adventure of
the Blue Carbuncle” (1892), “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”
(1892), “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” (1904), and
the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Holmes’s character
has been translated to other media as well, and he is widely known
on both stage and screen. The earliest actor to have essayed the role
is William Gillette (a founding member of the New York Holmes
society still known as the Baker Street Irregulars), who gave several
popular theatrical portrayals at the turn of the 20th century. Those
who appeared as Holmes on-screen include Basil Rathbone, Peter
Cushing, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey, Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch,
and Jonny Lee Miller. Ironically, two of the emblems of Holmes, his
meerschaum pipe and deerstalker hat, are not original to Conan
Doyle’s writings. Gillette introduced the curved meerschaum pipe (it
is thought to have been easier on the actor’s jaw during a long
performance), and Sidney Paget the deerstalker (or “fore-and-aft”)
cap—it was de rigueur for country living—in more than one
illustration for The Strand of Holmes at work on his investigations in
the country.

In addition to myriad translations of the Holmes adventures

throughout the world, a genre of parodies and pastiches has
developed based upon the Sherlock Holmes character. An entire
collection of more scholarly “higher criticism” of Conan Doyle’s
writings was initiated by Ronald Knox’s “Studies in the Literature of
Sherlock Holmes” (1912). Subsequent higher criticism is epitomized
by the work appearing inThe Baker Street Journal (begun 1946),
published by the Baker Street Irregulars. Holmes devotees, known as
Sherlockians or Holmesians, frequently gather in societies around the
world to pay tribute to the master detective with a cultist fervour.
The most established of these societies are the invitation-only Baker
Street Irregulars , founded in 1934, and the Sherlock Holmes Society
of London , founded in 1951 and open to anyone. The latter, which
publishes The Sherlock Holmes Journal , traces its origins to the
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Sherlock Holmes Society that was formed in London in 1934 and
counted among its members the scholar and writer Dorothy L.
Sayers; it had ceased its activities by the 1940s.

The early years of the 20th century produced a number of

distinguished detective novels, among them Mary Roberts
Rinehart’s The Circular Staircase (1908) and G.K. Chesterton’s The
Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and other novels with the clerical
detective. From 1920 on, the names of many fictional detectives
became household words: Inspector French, introduced in Freeman
Wills Crofts’s The Cask(1920); Hercule Poirot, in Agatha Christie’s The
Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), and Miss Marple, in Murder at the
Vicarage (1930); Lord Peter Wimsey, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Whose
Body? (1923); Philo Vance, in S.S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder
Case (1926); Albert Campion, in Margery Allingham’s The Crime at
Black Dudley (1929; also published as The Black Dudley Murder);
and Ellery Queen, conceived by Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee,
in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929).
In a sense, the 1930s was the golden age of the detective story, with
the detectives named above continuing in new novels. The decade
was also marked by the books of Dashiell Hammett, who drew upon
his own experience as a private detective to produce both stories
and novels, notably The Maltese Falcon (1930) featuring Sam Spade.
In Hammett’s work, the character of the detective became as
important as the “whodunit” aspect of ratiocination was earlier. The
Thin Man (1934), with Nick and Nora Charles, was more in the
conventional vein, with the added fillip of detection by a witty
married couple. Successors to Hammett included Raymond
Chandler and Ross Macdonald, who also emphasized the characters
of their tough but humane detectives Philip Marlowe and Lew
Archer, respectively. At the end of the 1940s, Mickey
Spillane preserved the hard-boiled crime fiction approach of
Hammett and others, but his emphasis on sex and sadism became a
formula that brought him amazing commercial success beginning
with I, the Jury (1947).
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The introduction of the mass-produced paperback book in the late
1930s made detective-story writers wealthy, among them the
Americans Erle Stanley Gardner, whose criminal lawyer Perry
Mason unraveled crimes in court; Rex Stout, with his fat, orchid-
raising detective Nero Wolfe and his urbane assistant Archie
Goodwin; and Frances and Richard Lockridge, with another bright
married couple, Mr. and Mrs. North. In France, Georges
Simenon produced novel after novel at a rapid-fire pace, making his
hero, Inspector Maigret, one of the best-known detectives since
Sherlock Holmes. Other writers who carried out the tradition of
Holmes or broke new ground included Nicholas Blake (pseudonym of
the poet C. Day-Lewis), Michael Innes, Dame Ngaio Marsh, Josephine
Tey, Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr), and P.D. James. After 1945,
writers such as John le Carré adapted the detective-story format to
the spy novel, in which he addressed the mysteries and character of
the Cold War.

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