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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Inferior Sleuth (Doyle on Holmes)

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Inferior Sleuth (Doyle on Holmes)

The late Nis Jessen’s ‘A Study in Scarlet’ may be my favorite illustrated Holmes. It’s wonderful.

Welcome to week four of Doyle on Holmes. We started with The Truth Behind Sherlock Holmes. Then, it was Some Personalia about Sherlock Holmes. Last week, A Gaudy Death. This week, it’s a poem war featuring Sir Arthur! All four of these essays can be found in Peter Haining’s The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It’s a good book, and the only partial replacement I’ve found for Jack Tracy’s cornerstone book, Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha.

The Science of Deduction is the second chapter of A Study in Scarlet – the first Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes had explained the observations and inferences that had led to the famous line, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” Watson then – for the first, but certainly not the last, time – says it’s a simple matter. Watson then tells Holmes that he reminds him of Poe’s Dupin, and he didn’t know such existed in real life. Holmes sets him straight:

“Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. ‘No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,; he observed. ‘Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial.

It’s Elementary – Bearing in mind this the very first story, having Holmes say that is pretty funny. Since he would do exactly that with Watson, more than once.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Some Personalia About Sherlock Holmes (Doyle on Holmes)

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Some Personalia About Sherlock Holmes (Doyle on Holmes)

So in our first series post, we had a LONG post on ACD’s 1923 essay – The Truth Behind Sherlock Holmes – for Collier’s The National Weekly. This week, it’s an earlier one he which wrote for The Strand.

“The Adventure of the Dying Detective” ran in The Strand in December of 1913 (appearing the prior month over in America, in Collier’s). There wouldn’t be another Holmes story until September of 1917, with His Last Bow appearing in both The Strand, and Collier’s, that month.

Holmes having finally come back to his magazine with “The Dying Detective,” Strand editor Greenhough Smith was anxious to keep the detective’s name in the magazine. He persuaded Doyle to write an essay, Some Personalia About Sherlock Holmes, which ran in the December, 1917 issue. “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” wouldn’t follow until October of 1921.

I have this essay in Peter Haining’s The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, from Barnes and Noble. Last week’s The Truth Behind Sherlock Holmes is also in that nifty book.

 

LETTERS

Doyle begins by talking about how many letters he has received regarding Holmes. He mentions many are in Russian. He does recount an amusing story of a woman in Warsaw (Poland) who states that she had been bedridden for two years and his novels “were her only, etc etc.”

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Lost Classics of the Pulps: Guy Boothby’s The Curse of the Snake

Lost Classics of the Pulps: Guy Boothby’s The Curse of the Snake

Curse of the SnakeThe Curse of the Snake is the Guy Boothby title I have been waiting years to read. I previously covered the five books in his Dr. Nikola series as well as his 1899 novel, Pharos the Egyptian for Black Gate. Boothby is an author whose works have fallen into relative obscurity, but his influence was quite pervasive. A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, he turned out works that stand up well against their more celebrated efforts. Most importantly, the influence of Dr. Nikola is felt heavily upon Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series and the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Boothby’s great flaw was that he was a prolific author of serialized novels who made no effort to correct inconsistencies when his works were published in book form. This hurt his reputation and, along with the speed with which he produced new works, unfairly suggested he was little more than a hack.

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