• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

—from Quarterly Review (July 1904)

Questions

1. Raymond Chandler, the author of hard-boiled detective novels, wrote, “Sherlock Holmes is after all mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.” Is Chandler being fair? If not, how?

2. How do you explain the continuous popularity of the Holmes stories? They are not very realistic, after all.

3. Would it be possible to write detective stories featuring characters like Holmes and Watson, but set in New York or Chicago or San Francisco in the twenty-first century?

4. In A Study in Scarlet America is described as lawless and violent, politically, domestically, and sexually—even the landscape is violent and inhospitable. This lawlessness is imported by Americans into England, as exemplified by the scene of the crime, where the evidence is radically unrelated and violently disordered. The circumstances in The Sign of Four are similar, but instead of America the setting is India, at the time a British colony. Luckily, Holmes is around to save the day. Are there variations of this framework in the stories? What was going on in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century to make it relevant?

FOR FURTHER READING

Other Works by Arthur Conan Doyle

Fiction

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. London: George Newnes, 1896. Among the most popular books Doyle ever wrote, this is an account of an officer in Napoleon’s army who could be a precursor to Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling Peter Sellers character.

The Land of Mist. London: Hutchinson, 1926. Those interested in Doyle’s thoughts about spiritualism will want to read this novel.

The Lost World. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912. Still in print and the subject of more than one film, this novel featuring dinosaurs of all stripes is likely to remain Doyle’s most popular work after the Holmes stories.

Micah Clarke. London: Longmans, Green, 1889. This non-Holmesian work was Doyle’s first historical novel, and one for which Oscar Wilde expressed enthusiasm.

The Stark Munro Letters. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. This autobiographical novel is worth reading if only for the bizarre but fascinating account it gives of Doyle’s friend and betrayer, George Budd, fictionalized as Cullingworth.

Nonfiction

The History of Spiritualism. London: Cassell, 1926. Reflecting Doyle’s most passionate concern, this book is more revealing than his autobiography.

Memories and Adventures. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924; second edition, London: John Murray, 1930. This autobiography gives a surface account of the many colorful adventures Doyle lived but does not invite the reader into the workshop of his soul.

Through the Magic Door. London: Smith, Elder, 1907. This justification of the Western classics describes the books in Doyle’s personal library and what they have meant to him; it contains some very fine writing.

Biography

Lellenberg, Jon L., ed. The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Thirteen Biographers in Search of a Life. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. A good biography with an introduction by Doyle’s daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle.

Nordon, Pierre. Conan Doyle: A Biography. Translated from the French by Frances Partridge. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. A biography written at a time when access to private, unpublished material was not legally restricted.

Pearson, Hesketh. Conan Doyle: His Life and Art. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Brief, but highly entertaining.

Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. A big, handsome volume that takes advantage of all the previously collected material.

Criticism

Baring-Gould, William S., ed The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-six Short Stories Complete. With an introduction, notes, and bibliography by Baring-Gould. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1968. If exact and minute detail is what you’re after, you will find it to your heart’s content in this massive two-volume edition. Baring-Gould and a host of subeditors combed every piece of published