Ten Facts about Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes (/rlk homz/) is a fictional character created by British

author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A London-based "consulting
detective" whose abilities border on the fantastic, Holmes is known for his
astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use
of forensic science to solve difficult cases.

The character first appeared in print in 1887, and was featured in four novels
and 56 short stories by Conan Doyle, as well as later works by other authors.
The first novel, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in
1887 and the second, The Sign of the Four, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
in 1890. The character's popularity grew with the first series of short stories
in The Strand Magazine, beginning with "A Scandal in Bohemia" in 1891;
additional short-story series and two novels (published in serial form)
appeared from then to 1927. The events in the stories take place from about
1880 to 1914.

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John
H. Watson. Two are narrated by Holmes himself ("The Adventure of the
Blanched Soldier" and "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"), and two others
are written in the third person ("The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" and
"His Last Bow"). In two stories ("The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" and
"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott"), Holmes tells Watson the story from
memory, with Watson narrating the frame story. The first and fourth novels, A
Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear, include long passages of omniscient
narrative of events unknown to either Holmes or Watson.

Inspiration for the character

Doyle said that Holmes was inspired by Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal
Infirmary of Edinburgh for whom he had worked as a clerk. Like Holmes, Bell
was noted for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations.[1]
However, he later wrote to Conan Doyle: "You are yourself Sherlock Holmes
and well you know it".[2] Sir Henry Littlejohn, Chair of Medical Jurisprudence
at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, is also cited as an inspiration
for Holmes. Littlejohn, who was also Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of
Health in Edinburgh, provided Doyle with a link between medical
investigation and the detection of crime.[3]

Another inspiration is thought to be Francis "Tanky" Smith, a policeman and

master of disguise who went on to become Leicester's first private detective.
[4]

Another inspiration might be Maximilien Heller, by French author Henry

Cauvain. In this 1871 novel (16 years before the first adventure of Sherlock
Holmes), Henry Cauvain imagined a depressed, anti-social, polymath, catloving and opium-smoking Paris-based detective.[5][6][7] It is not known if
Conan Doyle read Maximilien Heller or if all this is coincidental, but it might
be a reason why he wrote in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (Holmes
speaking) : "My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the
sister of Vernet, the French artist."

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 7 July 1930) was a
British[1] writer and physician, most noted for his fictional stories about the
detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the
field of crime fiction.

He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he

invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary
Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and
science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical
novels.

Posted by interestingliterature

1. Sherlock Holmes was originally going to be called Sherrinford. The name

was altered to Sherlock, possibly because of a cricketer who bore the name.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Holmes (of course), was a fan of cricket
and the name Sherlock appears to have stuck in his memory. Doyle was also
a keen cricketer himself, and between 1899 and 1907 he played ten firstclass matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club quite fitting, since Baker
Street is situated in the Marylebone district of London. For more on the
creation of Holmes, see the detailed Introduction in The Uncollected
Sherlock Holmes.

sherlock22. The first Sherlock Holmes novel was something of a flop. The
detective made his debut in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887), written by a
twenty-seven-year-old Doyle in just three weeks. Famously, Doyle was
inspired by a real-life lecturer of his at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Joseph
Bell, who could diagnose patients simply by looking at them when they
walked into his surgery; the other important influence on the creation of
Sherlock Holmes was Edgar Allan Poes fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin,
two of whose adventures we include in our pick of Poes best short stories.
Doyle wrote the book while he was running a struggling doctors surgery
down in Portsmouth. The novel was rejected by many publishers and
eventually published in Beetons Christmas Annual (named after the husband
of Mrs Beeton, of the book of cookery and household management). It didnt
sell well, and more or less sank without trace.

3. The second Sherlock Holmes novel was the result of a dinner party with
Oscar Wilde. One person who had admired the first novel was the editor
Joseph Stoddart, who edited Lippincotts Monthly Magazine. He convinced
Doyle, at a dinner party in 1889, to write a second novel featuring the
detective, for serialisation in the magazine. Wilde, who was also present, also
agreed to write a novel for the magazine his only novel, The Picture of
Dorian Gray, which appeared in 1890, the same year as The Sign of the Four,
Doyles novel.

4. Sherlock Holmes didnt wear a deerstalker. Much. The famous image of

Holmes wearing a deerstalker hat is a product of the celebrated images which
accompanied the short stories, which appeared in the Strand magazine from
1891. It is when the stories began to appear that Sherlock Holmes became a
worldwide sensation. Sidney Paget, who drew the illustrations, had Holmes
wearing a deerstalker when the detective went into the country to investigate
mysteries at country houses and in small rural villages, but most people think
of the detective as always donning the hat when off to investigate a case.

5. Sherlock Holmes is the most-filmed fictional character. According to IMDb,

Holmes has appeared in 226 films and been played by dozens of different
actors since the advent of cinema in the late nineteenth century.

6. Sherlock Holmes is not the most-filmed fictional character. That is, not if
you include non-humans (or partial humans). Dracula has been filmed more

times than the great sleuth, at 239 times, but since Dracula is part-man, partvampire, Holmes is the most-filmed fully human character.

sherlock17. Sherlock Holmes didnt make deductions. At least, not most of

the time. Instead, and if we want to be technically accurate, he used the
logical process known as abduction. The difference between deductive and
abductive reasoning is that the latter is based more on inference from
observation, where the conclusion drawn may not always necessarily be true.
However, in deduction, the conclusion drawn from the available data is
always necessarily true. But then again, since Holmess reasoning always
seems to be correct, perhaps it is deduction after all!

8. Holmes never says Elementary, my dear Watson. Not in the canon of

original Conan Doyle novels and stories. Holmes says Elementary! and my
dear Watson at various points, but the idea of putting them together was a
later meme, which possibly arose because it neatly conveys Holmess
effortless superiority to his dear friend and foil. The first recorded use of this
exact phrase is actually in a P. G. Wodehouse novel of 1915, Psmith,
Journalist.

9. The Sherlock Holmes Museum both is and isnt at 221B Baker Street.
Although the museum in London bears the official address 221B, in line with
the celebrated address from the stories, the museums building lies between
237 and 241 Baker Street, making it physically if not officially at number
239.

10. Theres more to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle than Sherlock Holmes. Much
more, in fact. Among other achievements, his legal campaigning led to the
establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal. He was knighted for his
journalistic work during the Second Boer War, not for his achievements in
fiction, law, or medicine. We owe the word grimpen to him (from Grimpen
Mire, in The Hound of the Baskervilles). He wrote historical novels (such as
The White Company and Sir Nigel, set during the fourteenth century) which
he prized more highly than his detective fiction. Winston Churchill agreed,
and was a devoted fan of the historical novels. Doyle also wrote science
fiction romances, such as The Lost World (1912), which would inspire Michael
Crichtons Jurassic Park, and, subsequently, Steven Spielbergs film (the
sequel to the novel and film being named, in homage to Doyle, The Lost

World). Doyle also took up legal causes himself: read Julian Barness novel
Arthur and George for his most famous real-life case. Weve detailed some of
Conan Doyles other extraordinary achievements in this post all about Doyle
and his writing.

Ten More Facts about Sherlock Holmes

DEC 9
Posted by interestingliterature
What connects Sherlock Holmes, W. G. Grace, Peter Pan, and the Mary
Celeste? Our previous collection of Sherlock Holmes facts proved so popular
when we posted it back in May that we decided to write a sequel. This seems
especially timely since the hit BBC TV series Sherlock will be returning for a
third series in a few weeks. So here we are: ten more facts about Sherlock
Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

1. The original name of Dr Watson was Ormond Sacker. In the early drafts for
plot outlines, Doyle has Holmess friend and sidekick named Ormond Sacker
rather than the altogether more common and humdrum John Watson. Doyle
must have realised that Watsons everyman status was better served by a
more down-to-earth and usual name, and altered it. Which brings us to our
second fact

2. Dr Watsons first name was John except for one story. In The Man with
the Twisted Lip, one of the early adventures, Watsons wife Mary refers to her
husband as James. Dorothy L. Sayers, another distinguished crime writer,
speculated that this was in reference to Hamish, which may be what the H.
of John H. Watson is for (Doyle never reveals what the name in fact stands
for, and indeed Watsons first name is only mentioned three times in the 60
novels and stories).

3. Holmess creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once bowled out cricketing
legend W. G. Grace. Conan Doyle played ten matches for the Marylebone
Cricket Club or MCC, and although it wasnt exactly a distinguished cricketing
career, its highlight was undoubtedly the match in which Doyle managed to
take a first-class wicket the batsman being none other than W. G. Grace.

Holmes14. The first parody of Sherlock Holmes was written by the creator of
Peter Pan. J. M. Barrie whom weve discussed in an earlier blog post wrote
a pastiche of Holmes in 1893, some ten years before he created the boy who
would not grow up. Whats odd about Barries parody, titled The Late
Sherlock Holmes, is that it shows the police investigating the death of
Holmes (they believe that Watson has killed him for money). Barries story
was published in the St James Gazette in December 1893, the same month as
Doyles The Final Problem in which Holmes is seemingly killed at the
Reichenbach Falls appeared in The Strand. Since Barrie and Doyle were
close friends, critics have speculated that Barrie had told Doyle of his plans to
kill off Holmes, and this accounts for the coincidence.

5. Dr Watson narrated all of the Sherlock Holmes stories? Not exactly. He

narrates nearly all of them, but not quite all four of the stories are not
narrated by Watson. Of these four, two are told in the third person, and two,
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier and The Adventure of the Lions
Mane, are actually told by Holmes himself.

6. Conan Doyle wrote other stories featuring Sherlock Holmes which arent
part of the canon. These include The Field Bazaar (1896) and How Watson
Learned the Trick (1924). The Field Bazaar was written after Doyle had
killed off Holmes but before he brought the detective back in The Empty
House; Doyle received a letter from his alma mater, Edinburgh University,
requesting a short story for a fundraising event, and Doyle duly obliged by
writing this brief pastiche. How Watson Learned the Trick was written for
Queen Marys Dolls House, which saw numerous authors writing very short
stories inside a miniature book (other writers who contributed included J. M.
Barrie and Rudyard Kipling).

7. The Mark Haddon bestseller, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime, took its title from a Sherlock Holmes story. The phrase appears in
Silver Blaze, one of the most popular Holmes stories. Inspector Gregory asks
Holmes, Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my
attention? Holmes replies: To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time. Holmes: That was the
curious incident. Although Doyles story is about a missing racehorse,
Haddons is as the title suggests about a missing dog.

8. Much of the popular image of Holmes was the result of William Gillette.
Gillette, an American actor, portrayed Holmes in over 1,300 stage
performances and in a 1916 film (now sadly lost). He wore the deerstalker
cap on stage thus helping further to cement the notion, begun largely with
the illustrations, that Holmes frequently wore the hat and was responsible
for popularising the image of Holmes smoking the curved briar pipe. As a
result, people tend to picture Holmes smoking a curved pipe instead of the
straight ones he smoked in the stories and illustrations. Gillette reportedly
opted for a curved pipe as it allowed him to recite his lines more easily,
although it is more likely that he used a curved pipe because it was easier for
the audience to see his face.

9. Before he created Sherlock Holmes, Doyle helped to create the modern

mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste. Before he had conceived and written
the first Sherlock Holmes novel, Doyle was already writing other mysteries
which drew on real life. In 1884, Doyle wrote a short story, J. Habakuk
Jephsons Statement, which was published anonymously in the Cornhill
magazine, about the Mary Celeste, the British-American merchant ship which
was discovered abandoned in the Atlantic in 1872. Although Doyle built his
story around solid fact, he embellished here and there and many
newspapers subsequently took this fictional statement as fact. The
misspelling of the boats name as Marie Cleste is also down to Doyle.