Sherlock Holmes

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A portrait of Sherlock Holmes from the Strand Magazine, 1891

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He was devised by Scottish author and doctor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his prowess at using logic and astute observation to solve cases. He is perhaps the most famous fictional detective, and indeed one of the best known and most universally recognisable literary characters.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring his creation. Almost all were narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, with the exception of two narrated by Holmes himself and two more written in the third person. The stories first appeared in magazine serialisation, notably in The Strand Magazine, over a period of forty years. This was a common form of publication at the time: Charles Dickens' works were issued in a similar fashion. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914. They are read as much for their characterisation and the stylised late-Victorian world in which they take place as for the mysteries themselves.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] His knowledge and skills

Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr. Watson, by Sidney Paget.

In the very first story, A Study in Scarlet, something of Holmes' background is given. In early 1881 he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side-interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. In another early story, "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", more background on what caused Holmes to become a detective is presented: a college friend's father complimented him very highly on his deductive skills.

In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson makes an evaluation of Sherlock's skills:

Knowledge of Literature.—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 soils 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.

Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.

Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Later stories make clear, however, that the above list is misleading, and that Holmes — who has just met Watson — is pulling Watson's leg. Two examples: despite Holmes' supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognizes the true identity of the supposed Count von Kramm. Regarding non-sensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, and even Goethe. This is somewhat inconsistent with his scolding Watson for telling him about how the Earth revolved around the Sun, instead of the other way around, given that Holmes tried to avoid having his memory cluttered with information that is of no use to him in detective work.

Also in A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle presents a comparison between his sleuth and two earlier, more established fictional detectives: Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Emile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq. The former had first appeared in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, first published in 1841, and the latter in L'Affaire Lerouge (The Lerouge Affair) in 1866. The brief discussion between Watson and Holmes about the two characters begins with a comment by Watson:

"You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories."

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. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."

"Have you read Gaboriau's works?" I asked. "Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?"

Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. "Lecoq was a miserable bungler," he said, in an angry voice; "he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a textbook for detectives to teach them what to avoid."

Holmes seems convinced that he is superior to both of them, while Watson expresses his admiration of the two characters. It has been suggested that this was a way for Conan Doyle to pay some respect to characters by writers who had influenced him, while insisting that his is an improvement over them. However, Holmes pulls a very Dupin-esque mindreading trick on Watson in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" (repeated word for word in the story, "The Resident Patient," when "The Cardboard Box" was removed from the Memoirs), and, to a lesser extent, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers." One such scheme is solved in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" which uses a series of stick figures, for example:

Holmes has shown himself a master of disguise:

A seaman (The Sign of Four)
A groom and a clergyman ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
An opium addict ("The Man with the Twisted Lip")
A common loafer ("The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet")
An old Italian priest ("The Adventure of the Final Problem")
A bookseller ("The Adventure of the Empty House")
A plumber ("The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton")
A dying man ("The Adventure of the Dying Detective")
An old sporting man ("The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone")
A woman ("The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone")

Although Holmes looks upon himself as a disembodied brain, there are times when he can become very emotional in a righteous cause, as when he disapproves of the banker Holder as to how the man treated his son, in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet". At the end of "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", he is touched by Lestrade's deep gratitude for assisting Scotland Yard. Watson says, "he was more nearly moved by the softer human emotions than I had ever seen him". And, in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded by a forger he and Holmes are pursuing. While the bullet wound proved to be "quite superficial", Watson is moved by Holmes' reaction.

It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

Holmes could be looked upon then as the forerunner of modern forensic sciences:

The use of footprints, shoe prints, horseshoe prints, carriage wheel tracks, and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (A Study in Scarlet, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", "The Hound of the Baskervilles")
The use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", The Hound of the Baskervilles)
The use of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity")
The deduction of murder from two pieces of human remains ("The Adventure of the Cardboard Box")
The observation of gunpowder residue on victim ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire")
The observation of use of bullets from murder weapon from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House")
The use of a fingerprint to free an innocent man ("The Adventure of the Norwood Builder") (an especially subtle case, as Holmes recognises the fingerprint as a forgery)

Holmes also demonstrated knowledge of psychology e.g. luring Irene Adler to betray where the hidden photographs of the King of Bohemia were by staging a "fire" at her home. ("A Scandal in Bohemia")

In "The Adventure of the Second Stain", Dr. Watson says that after his long career, Holmes moved to the Sussex Downs and took up beekeeping.

[edit] His personality and habits

Monument of Sherlock Holmes in London

Holmes is not at all a stuffy straight-laced Victorian gentleman as one might think; in fact, he describes himself and his habits as "Bohemian." Modern readers of the Holmes stories are apt to be surprised that he was an occasional user (a habitual user when lacking in stimulating cases) of cocaine and morphine, though Watson describes this as Holmes' "only vice". In his personal habits, he is very disorganized, as Watson notes in The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, leaving everything from notes from past cases to remains of chemical experiments scattered around their rooms.

Nevertheless, Watson was very typical of his time in not considering a vice Holmes' habit of smoking (usually a pipe) heavily, nor his willingness to bend the truth and break the law (e.g., lie to the police, conceal evidence, burgle and housebreak) when it suited his purposes. In Victorian England, such actions were not necessarily considered vices as long as they were done by a gentleman for noble purposes, such as preserving a woman's honour or a family's reputation (this argument is discussed by Holmes and Watson in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"). Since many of the stories revolve around Holmes (and Watson) doing such things, a modern reader must accept actions which would be out of character for a "law-abiding" detective living by the standards of a later time. (They remain staples of detective fiction, being done in a good cause.) Holmes has a strong sense of honour and "doing the right thing".

Holmes can often be quite dispassionate and cold; however, when hot on the trail of a mystery, he can display a remarkable passion given his usual languor.

He has a flair for showmanship, and often, he prepares dramatic traps to capture the culprit of a crime which are staged to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors (as at the end of "The Norwood Builder"). He also holds back on his chain of reasoning, not revealing it or only giving cryptic hints and surprising results, until the very end, when he can explain all of his deductions at once.

Holmes is also a proudly patriotic Englishman, as demonstrated by the patriotic symbols he shot into the wall of his rooms with his gun. He has also done counterintelligence work for his government in several cases, most often tracking down stolen state documents or thwarting the work of foreign spies.

Holmes does have an ego that sometimes seems to border on arrogance; however, his arrogance is usually deserved. He seems to enjoy baffling the police inspectors with his superior deductions. Holmes is usually quite content to allow the police to take the credit for his work, with Watson being the only one to broadcast his own roles in the case (in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", he remarks that of his last fifty-three cases, the police have had all the credit in forty-nine), although he enjoys receiving praise from personal friends and those who take a serious interest in his work.

Although he initially needed Watson to share the rent of his comfortable residence at 221B Baker Street we are told in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" (when he was living alone) "I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms" suggesting he had developed a good income from his practice, although it is never revealed exactly how much he charges for his services. It is possible, however, that he charges based on the client's ability to pay — in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes states that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably, while in "The Adventure of Black Peter" Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him, while he could devote weeks at a time to the cases of the most humble clients. Certainly, in the course of his career Holmes had worked for both the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe (including his own) and various wealthy aristocrats and industrialists, and also been consulted by impoverished pawnbrokers and humble governesses on the lower rungs of society.

Holmes is generally quite fearless. He dispassionately surveys horrific, brutal crime scenes; he does not allow superstition (as in The Hound of the Baskervilles) or grotesque situations to make him afraid; and he intrepidly confronts violent murderers. He is generally unphased by threats from his criminal enemies, and indeed Holmes himself remarks that it is the danger of his profession that has attracted him to it.

Finally, Holmes does have capacities for human emotion and friendship. He has a remarkable capacity to gently soothe and reassure people suffering from extreme distress, a talent which comes in handy when dealing with both male and female clients who arrive at Baker Street suffering from extreme fear or nervousness. In "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", we see an example of Holmes' affection for Dr. Watson when it is revealed that Watson has sold his practice as a doctor to a man named Verner, who, "...[gave] with astonishing little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask - an incident which only explained itself later, when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes, and it was my friend who had really found the money." Again we are shown his close personal friendship with Watson, whose near-death at the hands of a counterfeiter in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" elicits much grief and anger from Holmes. Over time, Holmes' relations with the official Scotland Yard detectives goes from cold disdain to a strong respect.

[edit] Holmes, Watson, and firearms

Although on occasion Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them (see also Dr. Watson's revolver), there are only five times when these weapons are used:

They both fire at the Andaman Islander in "The Sign of Four".
They both fire at "The Hound of the Baskervilles".
Watson fires at the mastiff in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".
Watson pistol-whips Colonel Sebastian Moran in "The Adventure of the Empty House".
Holmes pistol-whips Killer Evans in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" after Watson is shot.

In "The Musgrave Ritual" it is revealed that Holmes decorated the wall of their flat with a patriotic "V.R." (Victoria Regina) done in bullet marks.

Besides a pistol, Holmes uses a riding crop/ cane as a weapon:

To knock the pistol from John Clay's hand in "The Red-Headed League".
To lash out at the snake (with his cane) in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band".

[edit] People in his life

An estimate of Holmes's age in the short story "His Last Bow" places his year of birth around 1854.

Historically, Holmes lived from the year 1881 at 221B Baker Street, London (in early notes it was described as being situated at Upper Baker Street), a flat up seventeen steps, where he shared many of his professional years with his good friend Dr. Watson for some time before Watson's marriage in 1887 or 1888 and after Mrs. Watson's death. The residence was maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

In almost all of the stories Holmes is assisted by the practical Watson, who is not only a friend but also his chronicler (his "Boswell"). Most of Holmes' stories are told as narratives, by Watson, of the detective's solutions to crimes brought to his attention by clients. Holmes sometimes criticizes Watson for his writings, usually because he relates them as exciting stories rather than as objective and detailed reports focusing on what Holmes regards as the pure "science" of his craft.

Holmes also has an older brother, Mycroft Holmes, a government official, who appears in three stories: "The Greek Interpreter", "The Final Problem", and "The Bruce-Partington Plans". He is also mentioned in a number of others, including "The Empty House". Mycroft had a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man for all aspects of government policy - a kind of walking database. Sherlock thought Mycroft was more gifted than he but he was not a man of action: he preferred to spend his time at the Diogenes Club with similar anti-social men.

In three stories, including The Sign of Four, he is assisted by a group of street children he calls the Baker Street Irregulars.

Law enforcement officers with whom Holmes has worked include G. Lestrade, Tobias Gregson, Stanley Hopkins, and Athelney (or Peter) Jones, all four of Scotland Yard, and Francois Le Villard of the French police. Holmes usually baffles the police with his far more efficient and effective methods, showing himself to be a vastly superior detective.

Holmes' arch-enemy and popularly-supposed nemesis was Professor James Moriarty ("the Napoleon of Crime"), who fell, struggling with Holmes, over the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle intended "The Final Problem", the story in which this occurred, to be the last that he wrote about Holmes. However, the mass of mailings he received demanding that he bring back his creation convinced him to continue. He did so with The Hound of The Baskervilles, although this was a case Holmes was involved in before his supposed death. His return in "The Adventure of the Empty House" had Conan Doyle explaining that only Moriarty fell over the cliff, but Holmes had allowed the world to believe that he too had perished while he dodged the retribution of Moriarty's underlings. Also, numerous sources claim that Moriarty was initially Holmes' mathematics tutor, as is also referenced in the work of Baring-Gould. Professor Moriarty also has a presence in The Valley of Fear.

[edit] Holmes and women

The only woman in whom Holmes ever showed any interest that verged on the romantic was Irene Adler. According to Watson, she was always referred to by Holmes as "The Woman." Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term — though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. She is also one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person only in one, "A Scandal in Bohemia". She is often thought to be the only woman who broke through Holmes' reserve. She is possibly the only woman who has ever "beaten" Holmes in a mystery; this point is unclear due to a comment with some chronological problems in one of the stories (see the Irene Adler or "The Five Orange Pips" articles for details). However, it is important to note that Watson explicitly states, "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler."

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", Holmes is engaged to be married, but only with the motivation of gaining information for his case.

He clearly demonstrates particular interest in several of the more charming female clients that come his way (such as Violet Hunter of "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", whom Watson thought might become more than a client to Holmes). However, the context implies that Holmes found their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they bring to him) invigorating, as opposed to an actual romantic interest, as Holmes inevitably "manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems."

If he was able to turn on a certain amount of charm, as indicated by these episodes, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest apart from the case of Adler. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]." Holmes stated "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind." His dislike may have stemmed from the fact he found "the motives of women... so inscrutable... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin." This resistance to his deductive processes may have annoyed him. On the other hand, it may be noted that the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, is never actually described. Another point of interest in Holmes' relationships with women, is that the only joy he gets from their company is the problems they bring to him to solve. In "The Sign of Four", Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine." this references Holmes' disinterest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, as Watson states that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times".

Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women." Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent". Holmes cannot be said to be misogynistic, given the number of women he helps in his work, but it may be that his own detached and analytical personality is annoyed by their excessively emotional (from his perspective) natures.

Watson, on the other hand, has a perhaps justifiable reputation as a ladies' man, boasting in The Sign of Four of "an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents." In addition, he speaks favourably of some women — indeed, in virtually all the longer stories he remarks on the exceptional beauty of at least one female character — and actually married one, Mary Morstan of The Sign of Four.

[edit] Holmesian (or Sherlockian) deduction

"Holmes' belongings" including a magnifying glass, calabash pipe, and a deerstalker cap at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London.

"From a drop of water", Holmes wrote in an essay described in A Study in Scarlet, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his deduction. Holmesian (the British adjective; Americans may be rarely heard to say "Sherlockian") deduction appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles — which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes' study of different kinds of cigar ashes — or inference to the best explanation. In many cases, the deduction can be modelled either way. In 2002, Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry — the only fictional character so honoured — in appreciation of the contributions to forensic investigation.^[1]

[edit] Principles

Holmes' straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as one may observe in the following example, often some intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl." When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

"It is simplicity itself... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey."

In this case, we might say Holmes employed several connected principles such as these:

If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.
If a 19th-century London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.
If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.
If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, that person has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather.

By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of modus ponens), Holmes is able to infer from

'p': The sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts.

'q1': Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless.

and

'q2': Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather.

But perhaps Holmes is not giving a proper explanation — after all, Holmes may be well aware of Watson's servant girl. As Watson is a doctor and it has been raining, it is likely he has been out in the rain.

Of course, Holmes' deductive reasonings are a common tool by which certain characters (particularly his astonished clients) are introduced by Holmes himself into the story. For example, in Conan Doyle's story The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, Holmes' observations allow him to deduce that the client, Violet Smith, enjoys bicycling, due to slight roughenings of the sides of her shoe's soles from friction with the pedals. He also noted that the lady had spatulated finger-ends, which he initially assumed had been acquired from typewriting. However, he then openly corrected himself by commenting on Ms. Smith having a certain spirituality about the face (which he commented would not come from working with a typewriter), and remarked how such fingers can also develop from playing musical instruments; Thus, he identified Ms. Smith as being a musician (a music teacher to be precise).

In other instances of Holmesian deduction, it is more difficult to model his inference as deduction using general principles, and logicians and scientists will readily recognize the method used, instead, as an "inductive" one — in particular, "argument to the best explanation", or, in Charles S. Peirce's terminology, "abduction". However, that Holmes should have called this "deduction" is entirely plausible.

The instances in which Holmes uses deduction tend to be those where he has amassed a large body of evidence, produced a number of possible explanations of that evidence, and then proceeds to find one explanation that is clearly the best at explaining the evidence. For example, in The Sign of Four, a man is found dead in his room, with a ghastly smile on his face, and with no immediately visible cause of death. From a whole body of background information as well as evidence gathered at and around the scene of the crime, Holmes is able to infer that the murderer is not one of the various people that Scotland Yard has in custody (each of them being an alternative explanation), but rather another person entirely. As Holmes says in the story, "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" This phrase has entered Western popular culture as a catchphrase. It also turned up in the Dirk Gently stories by Douglas Adams where the detective uses the opposite phrase, "because we know very much about what is improbable, but very little about what is possible".

In the latter example, in fact, Holmes' solution of the crime depends both on a series of applications of general principles and argument to the best explanation.

Holmes' success at his brand of deduction, therefore, is due to his mastery of both a huge body of particular knowledge of things like footprints, cigar ashes, and poisons, which he uses to make relatively simple deductive inferences, and the fine art of ordering and weighing different competing explanations of a body of evidence. Holmes is also particularly good at gathering evidence by observation, as well locating and tracking the movements of criminals through the streets of London and its environs (in order to produce more evidence) — skills that have little to do with deduction per se, but everything to do with providing the premises for particular Holmesian deductions. Four examples of Holmes' deductions of an owner's lifestyle are: Dr. Watson's old pocket watch in The Sign of Four, Dr. Mortimer's walking stick in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mr. Grant Munro's pipe in "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" and Henry Baker's hat in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle".

In the stories by Conan Doyle, Holmes often remarked that his logical conclusions were "elementary", in that he considered them to be simple and obvious. He also, on occasion, referred to his friend as "my dear Watson". However, the complete phrase, "Elementary, my dear Watson", does not appear in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle. It does appear at the very end of the 1929 film, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first Sherlock Holmes sound film, and may owe its familiarity to its use in Edith Meiser's scripts for The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio series. The phrase was first used by American actor William Gillette though.

It should be noted too, that our modern stereotype of police procedure — someone who looks for physical clues, rather than someone who examines opportunity and motive — comes from Holmes.

As mentioned in the Overview section above, Conan Doyle was an admirer of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1858, Holmes had written, in his Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, “Tell me about Cuvier’s getting up a megatherium from a tooth … so all a man’s antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance….” This recalls what Schopenhauer had written in 1851, “Just as a botanist recognizes the whole plant from one leaf and Cuvier constructed the entire animal from one bone, so from one characteristic action of a man we can arrive at a correct knowledge of his character.” (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, §118) These assertions are echoed in "The Five Orange Pips", in which Sherlock Holmes declared, “As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to state all the other ones, before and after.”

Readers of the Sherlock Holmes stories have often been surprised to discover that their author, Conan Doyle, was a fervent believer in paranormal phenomena, and that the logical, sceptical character of Holmes was in opposition to his own in many ways.

It must be noted that, in Holmesian deduction, it is important to attempt to eliminate all other possibilities, or as many as possible. This requires quite a bit of practice to reach. Watson attempts several times to perform Holmesian deductions, and even gives his explanations. However, he fails to recognize other equally probable circumstances, and is wrong on almost every count.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

A Study in Scarlet (serialized 1887)
The Sign of the Four (published 1890)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialized 1901–1902 in The Strand; original illustrations by Sidney Paget)
The Valley of Fear (serialized 1914–1915)

[edit] Short stories

For more detail see List of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories.

The short stories were originally published in periodicals; they were later gathered into five anthologies:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1891–1892 in The Strand.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1892–1893 in The Strand as further episodes of the Adventures.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1903–1904 in The Strand.
His Last Bow Contains stories published 1908–1913 and 1917.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1921–1927.

[edit] Lists of favourite stories

There are two famous lists of favourite stories: that of Conan Doyle himself, in The Strand in 1927, and that of the Baker Street Journal in 1959.

Conan Doyle's list:

The Baker Street Journal's list:

[edit] The Hiatus

Holmes fans refer to the period from 1891 to 1894 — the time between Holmes' disappearance and presumed death in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House" — as "the Great Hiatus". It is notable, though, that one later story ("The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge") is described as taking place in 1892.

Conan Doyle wrote the stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem", which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes' "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date).^[2]^[3] The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle resuscitated Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s, but the actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for a quarter-century longer.

Some writers have come up with alternate explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the hiatus was explained as a secret sabbatical that Holmes indulged in for those years after his drug rehabilitation treatment with Sigmund Freud's help, while he light-heartedly suggested that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he had died: "They'll never believe you in any case." A recent novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula, speculates that Holmes fell victim to the disease of vampirism and spent the Hiatus seeking a cure.

John Kendrick Bangs, creator of Bangsian fantasy, wrote a book in 1897 called Pursuit of the House-Boat (a sequel to his A House-Boat on the Styx, in which the souls of famous dead people start up a club in Hades). In it, the house-boat (which was hijacked at the end of A House-Boat on the Styx by Captain Kidd) is tracked down by the members of the club with the aid of none other than Sherlock Holmes — who is indeed dead.

In his memoirs, Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but he was never quite the same man after.

The differences in the pre- and post-Hiatus Holmes have in fact created speculation among those who play "The Game" (making believe Sherlock Holmes was a historical person). Among the more interesting and plausible theories: the later Holmes was in fact an impostor (perhaps even Professor Moriarty), the later stories were fictions created to fill other writers' pockets (this is often used to deal with the stories which supposedly are written by Holmes himself), and Holmes and Professor Moriarty were in fact a variation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Among the more fanciful theories, the story The Case of the Detective's Smile by Mark Bourne, published in the anthology Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, posits that one of the places Holmes visited during his hiatus was Alice's Wonderland. While there, he solved the case of the stolen tarts, and his experiences there contributed to his kicking the cocaine addiction.

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Canonical adaptations

Main article: Sherlock Holmes in other media

Vasily Livanov was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Russian TV series.

As Sherlock Holmes is such a popular character, there have been many theatrical stage and cinematic adaptations of Conan Doyle's work — much in the same way that Hamlet or Dracula are often revised and adapted.

The Guinness World Records has consistently listed him as the "most portrayed movie character" with over 70 actors playing the part in over 200 films.

[edit] Related and derivative works (non-canonical)

Main article: Non-canonical works related and derived from Sherlock Holmes

In addition to the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special" (1908) features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" clearly intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. His explanation for a baffling disappearance, argued in Holmes' characteristic style, turns out to be quite wrong — evidently Conan Doyle was not above poking fun at his own hero. A short story by Conan Doyle using the same idea is "The Man with the Watches". Another example of Conan Doyle's humour is "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924), a parody of the frequent Watson-Holmes breakfast table scenes. A further parody by Conan Doyle is "The Field Bazaar". He also wrote other material, especially plays, featuring Holmes. Many of these writings are collected in the books 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 Roger Lancelyn Green.

Sherlock Holmes' abilities as both a good fighter and as an excellent logician have been a boon to other authors who have lifted his name, or details of his exploits, for their plots. These range from Holmes as a cocaine addict, whose drug-fuelled fantasies lead him to cast an innocent Professor Moriarty as a supervillain (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), to science-fiction plots involving him being re-animated after death to fight crime in the future (Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century). Challenged to create a comedy about Sherlock Holmes, filmmaker Gene Wilder wrote, directed and starred in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references in the canon to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"), notably The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle with John Dickson Carr; others have used different characters from the stories as their own detective, e.g. Mycroft Holmes in Enter the Lion by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979) or Dr. James Mortimer (from The Hound of the Baskervilles) in books by Gerard Williams.

A common setting for uncanonical pieces pits Holmes and Watson against the Nazis. Most notable were the films made during the Second World War starring Basil Rathbone, but more recently The Curse of the Nibelung: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. Such pieces were in the spirit of Conan Doyle's patriotism, and indeed the canonic "His Last Bow" describes Holmes and his connections with British Intelligence on the eve of the First World War.

Jeremy Brett’s performance as Holmes is considered definitive by many viewers.

Jeremy Brett is generally considered the definitive Holmes of recent times, having played the role in four series created by John Hawkesworth for the BBC from 1984 though 1994 as well as depicting Holmes on stage. Brett's Dr. Watson were played by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke in the television series, and Brett himself played Watson opposite Charlton Heston's Holmes in a Los Angeles theatre production of The Crucifer of Blood before making his name as the detective.

In 2006, best-selling author and military historian Caleb Carr (perhaps best known for The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, both featuring Holmes-reminiscent protagonist Laszlo Kreizler) penned The Italian Secretary, a "continuing adventure of Sherlock Holmes." Dr. John Watson and Mycroft Holmes play significant parts in this story, and other follow-on/related works (including, but not limited to, a Holmes/Kreizler crossover) may be forthcoming.

It is also common for writers to pit Holmes against other well-known fictional characters originating from or set in the same era as Conan Doyle's stories — particularly those who now exist in the public domain, and so can be used freely without payment of royalties to the creator. In these crossovers, Holmes has frequently interacted with Dr. Fu Manchu (in Cay Van Ash's Ten Years Beyond Baker Street), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (in Loren Eastman's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes) and Dracula (In Loren Eastman's Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula or Stephen Seitz's "Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula"). He has also appeared as a significant (although often unseen) background presence in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and also Planetary by Warren Ellis.

Other writers have Holmes meeting real people and participating in real events. In Nicholas Meyer's works, Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, Oscar Wilde, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Bram Stoker, among other Victorian celebrities. In Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon, Minnesota journalist Larry Millett involves Holmes and Watson in the Great Hinckley Fire; their employer is railroad magnate James J. Hill, and they also meet Boston Corbett, the man who shot John Wilkes Booth. And on at least six occasions (Edward B. Hanna's novel The Whitechapel Horrors, Michael Didbin's novel The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, Philip J. Carraher's novel The Adventure of the New York Ripper [with Holmes using the alias Simon Hawkes], Barry Day's novel Sherlock Holmes and the Apocalypse Murders, and the movies A Study in Terror and Murder by Decree) Holmes gets involved in the Jack the Ripper case. In Caitlín R. Kiernan's "The Drowned Geologist," Holmes is placed in Whitby at the same time as the stranding of the Demeter, the ship which carried Dracula to England.

In recent years, Holmes has been featured in the Mary Russell series, by Laurie R. King. In the books Holmes is married to Mary Russell, a woman thirty-nine years his junior, and makes her his partner in detection. Carole Nelson Douglas also wrote an eight-novel detective series starring Irene Adler as a detective that also features Holmes.

[edit] Holmesian speculation

A popular pastime among fans of Sherlock Holmes is to act as if Holmes and Watson were real people, and to attempt to explain facts about them, either from clues in the stories or by combining the stories with historical fact. Early scholars of the canon included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in New York.

When a student at Oxford, Knox issued "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes", an essay which is regarded as the founding text of "Holmesian scholarship".

That essay was re-printed, among others, in 1928 and the following year, Sydney Roberts, then a professor at Cambridge University, issued a reply to Knox's arguments, in a booklet entitled A Note on the Watson Problem. S.C. Roberts issued then a complete Watson biography. A book by T.S. Blakeney followed and the Holmesian "game" was born.

In 1934 were founded the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York. Both are still active to-day (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951).

Dorothy Sayers, creator of the detective Lord Peter Wimsey, also wrote several essays on Holmesian speculation, later published in Unpopular Opinions, including an interesting discussion of Watson's middle name.

The 56 short stories and 4 novels written by Conan Doyle are termed "the canon" by the holmesians.

While Dorothy Sayers and many of the early "Holmesians" used the works of Conan Doyle as the chief basis for their speculations, a more fanciful school of playing the historical-Holmes game is represented by William S. Baring-Gould, author of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962), a personal "biography" of Holmes.

Since 1998, Leslie S. Klinger is currently editing The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, (Gasogene Books, Indianapolis), which sums up the available holmesian "scholarship" alongside the original "canonical" texts.

[edit] Holmes and Nietzsche

There is also the idea that many characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories were based heavily on real people, particularly Friedrich Nietzsche (who may have been the model for Holmes himself and Professor Moriarty), and that Conan Doyle borrowed from other authors, as many other writers have done. Samuel Rosenberg, in his Naked is the Best Disguise, details the striking references to Nietzsche in the Holmes stories. There is also strong belief that Holmes was based on one George Vale Owen. Owen was a scholar who worked with Conan Doyle, and became a close friend of his. The acknowledged model for Holmes' observational skills was Dr. Joseph Bell, whose assistant Conan Doyle had been.

[edit] The Holmes family

A particularly-rich area of "research" is the "uncovering" of details about Holmes' family history and early life, of which almost nothing is said in Conan Doyle's stories. In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Watson states: "I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his early life." But in that story, as well as introducing his brother, Holmes mentions the only facts about his family that are in any of the stories — "My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist" (presumably Horace Vernet). Beyond this, all familial statements are speculation. For example, there is a certain belief that his mother was named Violet, based on Conan Doyle's fondness for the name and the four strong Violets in the canon; however, as Baring-Gould noted, in Holmes' Britain, Violet was a very common name.

It is clear from references to "the university" in "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", and to some degree "The Adventure of the Three Students", that Holmes attended Oxford or Cambridge, although the question of which one remains a topic of eternal debate (Baring-Gould believed textual evidence indicated that Holmes attended both).

The most influential "biography" of Holmes is Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street by Baring-Gould. Faced with Holmes' reticence about his family background and early life, Baring-Gould invented one for him. According to Baring-Gould, Sherlock Holmes was born in Yorkshire, the youngest of three sons of Siger Holmes and Violet Sherrinford. The middle brother, Mycroft, appears in the canon, but the eldest, Sherrinford Holmes, was invented by Baring-Gould to free Mycroft and Sherlock from the obligation of following Siger as a country squire. (In reality, "Sherrinford Holmes" was one of the names Arthur Conan Doyle considered for his hero before settling on "Sherlock".) Siger Holmes' name is derived from "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which Sherlock spends some time pretending to be a Norwegian mountaineer called Sigerson. (This hardly qualifies as a clue about the name of Sherlock's father, but in the absence of any genuine clues it was the best Baring-Gould had to work with.)

Sherrinford had a significant role in the Doctor Who crossover novel All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, which also featured a cameo by Siger.

Some other versions of Holmes' parentage:

Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution reveals that his mother was cheating on his father, and so his father killed both his mother and himself. It also stipulates that it was his maths professor, Professor Moriarty, who brought the news of the tragedy to young Sherlock. This not only explains his career choice, but also (in an appropriately Freudian manner) his hatred of Professor Moriarty.
Ian Charnocks's Watson's Last Case names his father as Sherlock Holmes, Sr.
Robert D'Artagnan's Sherlock Holmes's Last Case names his father as Mark Moriarty and gives Sherlock's true name as Joseph Moriarty, explaining that he was adopted at age four by Gregory C. Holmes and his wife Lydia Mycroft Holmes. This would make him a younger brother of Professor James Moriarty.
Michael Harrison's I, Sherlock Holmes names his father as Captain Siger Holmes of the British East India Company.
Cass Lewis's Dead Man's Confession names his father as Robert Holmes and his mother Carla "Violet" Holmes.
Mona Morstein's The Childhood of Sherlock Holmes names his father as David William Holmes and his mother Catherine Simone Lecomte-Vernet.
Fred Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File gives his true father as the lover of Mrs. Holmes: The vampire Radu the Handsome, a younger brother of Vlad III Dracula, who had succeeded him as a ruler of Wallachia. This would make Sherlock a nephew of Dracula (against whom he was pitted in Loren D. Estleman's novel The Case of the Sanguinary Count).
Christopher Leppek's The Surrogate Assassin named Sherlock's father as a younger brother of Mary Ann Holmes, a historical figure better known as the mother of John Wilkes Booth. This would make Sherlock a first cousin of Booth.
Thaddeus Holt's "The Sixth Napoleon" identifies Holmes as great-grandson of Napoleon I, his father, the child of a secret marriage of Napoleon's son the Duke of Reichstadt, having been exchanged as a baby for the child who grew up to be Archduke Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico.

[edit] The Holmes family and the Wold Newton family

Based originally on the writings of Philip José Farmer, the concept of the Wold Newton family is the construction of a giant genealogical tree which connects many fictional characters to each other and to a number of historical figures. Additions to this tree are based on the writings of the original creators, pastiche writers, and "Wold Newton scholars." Sherlock Holmes has been one of the central characters of this tree. The Holmes family and its various generations have been the subject of many Wold Newton articles. Sherlock himself has been described as born as William Sherlock Scott Holmes on January 6, 1854 to Siger Holmes and his wife Violet Rutherford. He was one of eight siblings, including Mycroft, whose descendants include many other characters. The detective has been given as the father of at least eight children, including Nero Wolfe. Sherlock Holmes is also thought by many to be an ancestor of Spock of Star Trek, through his mother, Amanda Grayson (Captain Spock attributes a Holmesian aphorism to an ancestor of his in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; since Holmes is a fictional character with respect to the Star Trek universe, it's more likely that the reference means that he is matrilineally related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Holmes is revealed to have a great grand-niece named Shirley Holmes in the television show of the same name. But of course, Conan Doyle himself never called his creation any more than "Sherlock Holmes" so everything else is pure speculation.

[edit] The Societies

The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scions" societies of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Holmesian societies in many countries like India and Japan being the more prominent countries which have a history of such activity.

[edit] The Museums

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes' sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own very good Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still to be seen today. In 1990 The Sherlock Holmes Museum was opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen Switzerland another Museum was also opened, but naturally they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character.

[edit] Quotations

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know." ("The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle")
"The air of London is sweeter for my presence." ("The Final Problem")
"My brain has always governed my heart." (The Sign of Four)
"Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment." (The Sign of Four)
"A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her." ("The Musgrave Ritual")
"When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. . . A married woman grabs at her baby — an unmarried one reaches for her jewel box." ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." ("The Boscombe Valley Mystery")
"You can...never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant." (The Sign of Four)
"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last." ("The Adventure of the Red Circle")
"You see, but you do not observe" ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ("The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier")
also known as "...when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ("The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet")
"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule." (The Sign of Four)
'"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.' ("The Adventure of Silver Blaze")
"Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same". ("The Adventure of the Creeping Man")
'"I am inclined to think—" said I. "I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked, impatiently.' (The Valley of Fear)
"He is the Napoleon of crime!" (describing Professor Moriarty.) ("The Final Problem")
It is quite a three-pipe problem ("The Red-Headed League")
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
You know my methods. Apply them. (The Sign of Four and other stories)
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside ("The Copper Beeches")

[edit] Influence of Holmes

[edit] Role in the history of the detective story

A popular misconception is that the Sherlock Holmes stories gave rise to the entire genre of detective fiction. In fact, the Holmes character and his modus operandi were inspired by two predecessors, C. Auguste Dupin and Monsieur Lecoq and their technique for solving crime. Created by Edgar Allan Poe and Émile Gaboriau respectively, they were both investigators to whom even Holmes himself alluded. Many fictional sleuths have imitated Holmes' logical methods and followed in his footsteps, in various ways.

Some of the more popular to continue Holmes' legacy include Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Perry Mason, Frank Columbo, Dick Tracy, Gregory House, Gil Grissom, Horatio Caine, Mac Taylor, Adrian Monk, Jonathan Creek, Robert Goren, the children's book series Encyclopedia Brown, and even the comic book hero Batman. Teddy Valiant (Brother of Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) even sported Sherlocks' traditional tobacco pipe and magnifying glass among the paraphernalia on his untouched side of the desk.

The long running Japanese manga and anime Detective Conan (released as Case Closed in English due to copyright issues) was also heavily influenced by Sherlock Holmes, with the main character himself taking after Holmes' and giving himself a nickname based on Sir Arthur's middle name.

[edit] Other pop culture references

The Doctor takes his cue from Holmes' dress sense to blend in The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Writers have produced many pop culture references to Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, or characters from the stories in homage, to a greater or lesser degree. Such allusions can form a plot development, raise the intellectual level of the piece or act as easter eggs for an observant audience.

Some have been overt, introducing Holmes as a character in a new setting, or a more subtle allusion, such as making a logical character live in an apartment at number 221b. Often the simplest reference is to dress anybody who does some kind of detective work in a deerstalker and cloak (as seen right). Another rich field of pop culture references is Holmes' ancestry and descendants (as discussed above) but really the only limit is the writer's imagination. A third major reference is the quote, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

On Law & Order: Criminal Intent The character of Detective Robert Goren is based on Sherlock Holmes. He notices tiny — yet important — details ignored by others, and has broad encyclopedic knowledge. Frequently, Goren obtains crucial information and then sustain that theory based on evidence. He also gets confessions by psychologically manipulating and provoking suspects, and suspects' associates. Also Goren's Nicole Wallace is a direct attempt to play on Holmes' antagonist Professor Moriarty. However, Goren displays more compassion and empathy than Holmes. Goren even displays sorrow regarding how Wallace's past damaged her, and destroyed "that sparkling little girl" she once was.

The main character in House M.D, Gregory House, is based on Sherlock Holmes, particularly with regard to drug use and his desire (and capacity) to solve the insolvable. House uses Holmesian deductive techniques to diagnose his patients' problems. References to the sleuth range from the obvious (House's apartment number being 221B) to the subtle (his friendship with Dr. James Wilson and the similarities between the names House and Holmes, and Wilson and Watson). In the very first (pilot) episode the patient's last name is Adler, and in the last episode of season two, the last name of the man who shot House is Moriarty.

The characters and basic structure of the TV series Monk were inspired by the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The character name "Adrian Monk" was intended to be unusual like that of Sherlock Holmes. Other characters correspond to Holmes characters: Sharona Fleming (a nurse) and Dr. Watson; SFPD Captain Leland Stottlemeyer and Inspector Lestrade; and Monk's brother Ambrose Monk and Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's brother).

Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose contains numerous subtle references to Sherlock Holmes. The narrator's name is Adso (Watson) and the key character, William of Baskerville is deemed to be modeled after Holmes himself, due to the choice of the name, almost identical physical features, the habit of addressing his companion by "My dear Adso" and a storyline which sets a strictly rational brain upon path of investigation of a seemingly inexplicable chain of violent deaths.

[edit] Trivia

The Basil Rathbone Movie The Woman In Green is a combination of two Sherlock Holmes stories: "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House"-in reverse order.
A commercial for the mystery board game Clue features Holmes & Watson as players. (Watson wins.)
Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed fictional character on film, having been played by no fewer than 75 actors in 211 movies since 1900.
A character from the English dubbed version of Jikuu Tantei Genshi-kun, also known as Flint the Time Detective, was renamed from the original Japanese name of Kyoichiro Narugami (鳴神京一郎 Narugami Kyōichirō) to Merlock Holmes, in an obvious allusion to Holmes.
Holmes is dolichocephalic as told in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
In its early years, MAD Magazine parodied Sherlock Holmes twice. In both instances the character was named "Shermlock Shomes," and one story was a locked room mystery (it turned out the deceased had died accidentally); and "Hound of the Basketballs" (after "Hound of the Baskervilles.") In both, his companion was named "Dr. Whatsit."

In the ITV Holmes series, Dr Watson was first played by David Burke and then by Edward Hardwicke

[edit] Notes & References

^ This news article mentions Holmes' honour at the bottom of the page.
^ Dakin, D. Martin (1972). A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. ISBN 0-7153-5493-0
^ McQueen, Ian (1974). Sherlock Holmes Detected. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. ISBN 0-7153-6453-7

[edit] Bibliography

Baring-Gould, William S. (1967). The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York & John Murray Publishers, London. ISBN 0-517-50291-7
Klinger, Leslie S. (2004-5). The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York & London. ISBN 0-393-05916-2