Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
The World-Famous Scientific Detective, Created by Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is an instantly recognisable figure, and was one of the first great fictional detectives.
Sherlock Holmes, the most famous fictional detective of all time, was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and featured in four novels and a numerous short stories. Thanks to the stories’ enduring popularity, and numerous adaptations on the screen, Sherlock Holmes has become synonymous with detective fiction, and an worldwide icon.
The Science of Deduction
Holmes describes himself as a “consulting detective,” to distinguish himself from the police forces and seedy private detectives. His vast knowledge of poisons, criminology and medicine makes him invaluable to his clients, and to the police, who sometimes bring particularly difficult or sensitive cases to him. Holmes stresses the scientific and logical elements of his cases (the first chapter of The Sign of Four is entitled “The Science of Deduction”) and he combines attention to trivia with vast stores of obscure knowledge; he can tell, for example, where someone has been walking in London by the kind of mud on their coat, or in what part of the world a tattoo was done from the colours. It has been suggested that Conan Doyle based the character of Holmes partially Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh doctor under whom he studied.
Elementary, my dear Watson...
The Sherlock Holmes stories are narrated by Holmes’ friend and flatmate Dr. Watson. Watson is dependable, reliable and conventional, in contrast to Holmes’ eccentricities – the doctor comments upon the detective’s tendency to keep tobacco in a Persian slipper by the fireplace, play long melancholy improvisations on the violin, and practice his revolver marksmanship indoors. Watson also strongly disapproves of Holmes’ habit of injecting a mild solution of cocaine to stimulate his intellect when no suitable case is on hand to interest him. In his turn, Holmes disapproves of Watson’s tendencies to treat their cases, when he writes them up, as “adventures”, rather than as scientific papers demonstrating the principles of logic as applied to detective work.
Deerstalker and Meerschaum
The profile view of Sherlock Holmes, wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a meerschaum pipe, has become an instantly recognisable image, thanks in part to the many films made based on his adventures, particularly his most famous case, The Hound of the Baskervilles. There are numerous fan clubs, such as the Baker Street Irregulars, and several later authors have produced pastiches, adding spurious and apocryphal cases to Holmes’ histories, deliberately copying Conan Doyle’s style. Phrases from the Sherlock Holmes stories have also made their way into general parlance, such as “Elementary, my dear Watson”, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” and “it is quite a three-pipe problem.”
