Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. [1] In this context, the term "canon" is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle's original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters. Usually capitalized by fans of the Sherlockian game as "the Canon", the description of these 60 adventures as the Sherlock Holmes canon and the game of applying the methods of "Higher Criticism" to it was started by Ronald Knox as a playful use of the traditional definition of canon as an authoritative list of books accepted as holy scripture. [2]
The four novels of the canon:
The 56 short stories are collected in five books:
Published 14 October 1892; contains 12 stories published in The Strand between June 1891 and June 1892 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget. [3]
Contains 12 stories published in The Strand as further episodes of the Adventures between December 1892 and December 1893 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget (after the magazine publication, Doyle included "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" only in the His Last Bow collection).
Contains 13 stories published in The Strand between October 1903 and December 1904 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget.
Contains 7 stories published 1908–1917. Many editions of His Last Bow have eight stories, with "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" being a part of this collection rather than in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
Contains 12 stories published 1921–1927.
Since the author's death, professional and amateur Holmesians have discussed endlessly the expansion of this canon, to include other works by Doyle, including works in other media, into the current complete adventures. [4] Rumours have always surrounded lost works, [1] and in recent years further investigations have revealed more to the traditionally collected canon. As there exists no definitive body to argue what is, and what is not canonical beyond the already established novels and stories, it is unlikely that any piece, no matter how good its claim to be "canonical" will ever be popularly received into published versions of the Complete Sherlock Holmes. However, as many as eighteen works have been cited as possible entrants. These works include plays, poems, essays on the character, and even short stories. Published collections of extracanonical works include: Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha, edited by Jack Tracy; The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Peter Haining; The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes, edited by Richard Lancelyn Green; and the final volume of Leslie S. Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library titled The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes. These works, each with slightly different contents, discussed several titles and their place in the canon. [5]
In addition to the canon, Doyle wrote (occasionally with a co-writer) a number of vignettes, play adaptations and essays involving Holmes, and two short stories in which Holmes makes a possible cameo appearance. Most were published in various places during his lifetime; another has only come to light since his death. These are listed below with further detail. All these works except the plays are collected in The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
"The Field Bazaar" was written for an Edinburgh University fundraising event. Doyle had been requested by his university to contribute a short piece of literature for a charity magazine. In the story, Watson has received a similar request and whilst he reads the letter at breakfast, Holmes correctly deduces the sender of the letter and Watson's thoughts with regard to the letter. It has many similarities with the canonical stories, most notably the metafictional twist in which Watson supplants Doyle as the author publishing his own stories in a magazine. It also plays upon not only the famous skill of Holmes' observations producing apparently miraculous results, but also the notion of the "traditional breakfast scenes" which open many Holmes short stories. [6]
Though Doyle had killed off his character in "The Final Problem" (1893), he still wrote other short stories for publication in The Strand Magazine , including "The Story of the Man with the Watches" (published in July 1898, with illustrations by Frank Craig). It was collected in Doyle's Round the Fire Stories (1908) and Tales of Terror and Mystery (1922). [7] The story concerns the appearance of a dead man in a railway carriage, with six pocket watches in his jacket. An explanation is offered by an unnamed "well-known criminal investigator", but the narrator notes that it is flawed, as it doesn't take into account all the facts. A man involved in the accidental murder of the victim writes a letter to the detective, saying that it was a "mighty ingenious" solution but entirely incorrect and continues to share the true events of that day. Some commentators have proposed that the unnamed detective is Holmes. The story shares the same backing for categorising as a Sherlock Holmes story as "The Story of the Lost Special", and appears in French anthologies. [8] The story was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2009 as "The Thirteen Watches", in an episode from The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . The story was also adapted for radio in 2012 as "The Addleton Tragedy", an episode of the Imagination Theatre radio series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. [9]
"The Story of the Lost Special" was published in The Strand Magazine in August 1898. [7] It depicts a seemingly inexplicable mystery in which a special train and its few passengers disappear between two stations. After the mystery is described in full, it is stated that a letter appeared in the press, giving a proposed solution from "an amateur reasoner of some celebrity". As with "The Story of the Man with the Watches", it is possible, and has been proposed by Haining, Tracy, and Green, amongst others that this "amateur reasoner" was Sherlock Holmes. The strongest clue to this is the quotation, "once one has eliminated the impossible...", used by Holmes throughout his deductions. However, this suggested solution is proved wrong by a confession from the organising criminal once he is later arrested for an unrelated crime. Haining suggested that Doyle was "getting out some Holmes" during the series hiatus, but given the failure of the unnamed detective it appears he was parodying his most famous creation. The story was published in book form in Doyle's Round the Fire Stories (1908), and has for years appeared in French editions of the complete adventures. [8]
When searching through Doyle's papers, Hesketh Pearson, a biographer of his, came across a plan for an unwritten story. As Richard Lancelyn Green notes, "there is no evidence to show that it is by [Doyle] and strong internal evidence to suggest that it's not". [10] Various authors have attempted to complete the story (named "The Adventure of the Tall Man" by Peter Haining) and put it alongside the canon. Some are very close to Doyle's plot, others include variations from it. [11] However no 'official' completion has been made (in the same way as The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes was intended as an official continuation of the canon).
In 1922, several authors were approached to contribute to the library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House. Doyle wrote a short Sherlock Holmes story, just 503 words long, onto the tiny pages of a specially constructed miniature book: "How Watson Learned the Trick". The story was later published alongside works by other authors in The Book of the Queen's Dolls' House Library (1924). Though written 28 years after "The Field Bazaar", this is almost a companion piece to that story. Like "The Field Bazaar", this story is a breakfast scene, during which Watson attempts to mimic Holmes' style in guessing his thoughts. Watson's intuitions are proved wrong, however. Unlike almost all parts of the Sherlock Holmes story it is written in the third person, presumably due to its length. [12]
Unpublished until 2000, this play was written shortly after A Study in Scarlet was published. It is essentially a rewrite of the American chapters of A Study in Scarlet, with the London action moving to San Francisco. Holmes is not present, but Watson is, in a very different form. He acts discreditably and even marries another woman. The publication of this play was at first suppressed, Doyle's biographer, John Dickson Carr stated that it would do no good for the public to read this, a view that Haining endorses readily. [13] The play is notable for its contrasting sensationalist and comic scenes, and it is contained in Klinger's Apocrypha.[ citation needed ]
The original Sherlock Holmes play written by Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette had a successful run of over 30 years. It has many original parts which are not found in the short stories but borrows many events from the canonical adventures, namely "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Adventure of the Final Problem". Also, it had elements from A Study in Scarlet , The Sign of the Four , "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", and "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty". It includes the very first mention of the phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson". [14] [15] While Doyle wrote the original version, it is unclear how much of his material survived in the play as performed, which was written by Gillette. Doyle and Gillette later revised the play together; it has since been revised by others twice.[ citation needed ]
Around 1902, Doyle wrote and produced a play based on his short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". It premièred 8 years later, at the Adelphi Theatre, London on 4 June 1910, with H. A. Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes and Lyn Harding as Dr. Grimesby Roylott. The play, originally entitled The Stonor Case, differs from the story in several small details, such as the names of some of the characters [16] and the timeline is also changed. Holmes mentions Mary Morstan, who had already proposed Dr. Watson, twice and Charles Augustus Milverton also appears as a character.
"The Crown Diamond" is an alternate version of the short story "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" though it predates its counterpart by some time, [17] The play was first performed as "Evening with Sherlock Holmes" on 2 May 1921. [17] Sometime during the original run the short story was adapted from the play. [17]
Arthur Conan Doyle rarely gave interviews or publicly discussed his character. However, the following is a list of Doyle essays on his character which are currently in publication, either in Green or Haining's book or in standard editions of the Complete Stories:
Guiterman first published his homage in America in Life (5 December 1912) and then in London Opinion (14 December 1912), and in his collection The Laughing Muse. Doyle's answer appeared in the 26 December 1912 issue of London Opinion and was reprinted in the memoir of the editor of London Opinion, Lincoln Springfield. The late Dean Dickensheet appears to be the first to print the poems together, in An 'Undiscerning Critic' Discerned.[ citation needed ]
This essay was featured in The Strand Magazine as a Christmas treat to its readers. It talks of the way Holmes had caught the public imagination and Doyle's view on his character. [18]
An essay from Collier's Weekly, in which Doyle explains exactly where Holmes came from. It contains, at the end, J. M. Barrie's "The Adventure of the Two Collaborators". [19]
This appeared in The Strand Magazine to introduce a competition to name the best Sherlock Holmes adventures. The same essay, with two paragraphs cut, appears as the preface to The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.[ citation needed ]
This is the sequel to the article mentioned above. In it, Doyle listed what he thought were the best Holmes adventures. He noted that had he been able to include stories from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes he would certainly have included "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" and "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client". [20] The list is as follows:
Richard Lancelyn Green's The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes also includes five prefaces to the various editions of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, Doyle's speech at the Stoll Convention Dinner (1921), some chapters from Doyle's autobiography Memoirs and Adventures, and several interviews.[ citation needed ]
These are works which have in the past been thought to have been written by Doyle. Some have been conclusively proved to have no Doyle input, the composition of others still remains unclear.
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes , is a 1954 collection of stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle and Arthur's biographer, novelist John Dickson Carr. The stories are generally extrapolations of cases briefly mentioned in the canonical work, but tend to contradict themselves and each other. They are generally considered Sherlock Holmes pastiches. [21] The stories contained in the collection are:
This mystery, a completed Sherlock Holmes story, was found in 1942 by a Doyle biographer, Hesketh Pearson, searching through a box of Doyle's papers. It was originally announced that the story would not be published by the Doyle estate, but it was announced it certainly was by Doyle, as the manuscript supposedly appeared in his own handwriting. However, according to Jon L. Lellenberg in Nova 57 Minor, the manuscript was not in Doyle's handwriting, but typewritten. The Strand Magazine published extracts from it in August 1943, and it was finally published after demand from Sherlock Holmes societies in 1947, when it was embraced as a new (if slightly inferior) part of the canon by The Baker Street Irregulars amongst others. [22] Initial suspicions of forgery were reported by Vincent Starret. [23] In September 1945, a letter was received by Hesketh Pearson, a biographer of Sir Arthur. The letter stated, "My pride is not unduly hurt by your remark that 'The Man who was Wanted' is certainly not up to scratch for the sting is much mitigated by your going on to remark that it carries the authentic trade–mark! This, I feel, is a great compliment to my one and only effort at plagiarism." The letter was written by an architect named Arthur Whitaker who had sent the story to Arthur Conan Doyle in 1911 with a suggestion that they publish it as a joint collaboration. Doyle refused, but sent Whitaker a "cheque for ten guineas" in payment for the story. [24] After seeing it attributed to Sir Arthur in the Sunday Dispatch, Whitaker wrote a letter to Denis Conan Doyle explaining the true authorship. Denis forwarded the letter to his brother Adrian, who became angry, demanded proof, and threatened legal action. Whitaker had retained a carbon copy and the Doyles admitted in 1949, after seeing the carbon copy and listening to people who had read it in 1911, that Whitaker was the author. Doyle had bought the story, in the thought that he might use the idea at a later date, but he never did.[ citation needed ] Pearson, Green, Tracy and the Doyle estate agree that Whitaker wrote the story, though Haining still claims that "the opening scene between Holmes and Watson betrays the hand of the master", and that the story is partly written by Doyle. He points out that Doyle's wife, sons and biographer were fooled by the style, and it is possible there was a redraft made. [25] The story is published in Penguin's The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection under the title of "The Adventure of the Sheffield Banker."
Though never claimed by any serious critic to be a Doyle work, this parody is listed here due to a popular misconception that this was written by Doyle for his friend, J. M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame). (Perhaps contributing to this misconception is the fact that the story appears for the first time only in a work of Doyle's, and all subsequent printings are from that source.) In fact, this story was written by Barrie for Doyle following a period of the two of them working together on a play, Jane Annie. The story itself involves Doyle and Barrie visiting Holmes, with Doyle killing Holmes due to his irritating intelligence (which perhaps reflects Doyle's killing off of the character in "The Adventure of the Final Problem").
The recognition of William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes was growing as a result of the success of the play Sherlock Holmes. Playing upon his most famous role, a short comedy sketch performed by William Gillette as a curtain raiser to an unrelated play. It involves a mute Sherlock Holmes, and a very talkative client. In Haining and Tracy's books, they speculate as to whether or not this play was written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Certainly Gillette would have needed Doyle's consent to write an original work involving Sherlock Holmes, as the character was under copyright, but it is presumed by most Sherlockians that Gillette wrote the whole thing himself. Haining, however claims that Gillette may have asked Doyle to 'whip up something quickly for him'. However, no manuscript exists in Doyle's hand, and no reference of the play is left by him, it has been assumed by most that it is little more than a William Gillette curiosity. [26]
Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist, had been writing a Sherlock Holmes short story for the 2006 collection, "The Ghosts in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes", but was given the approval of the Doyle estate [27] to expand this it into a full novel, published in 2005. It is not considered canonical, instead, it is a literary pastiche.
In 2011, a new Sherlock Holmes novel written by British author Anthony Horowitz was published, entitled The House of Silk , it was the first official sequel authorised by the Conan Doyle Estate. [28] [29] [30] In 2014, a follow-up novel (but not a sequel), entitled Moriarty , was published, also written by Horowitz. [31]
In April 2024, a new novel Holmes and Moriarty was announced for release in September 2024, written by thriller writer Gareth Rubin, that "focuses on Professor Moriarty, the great detective’s nemesis" authorised by the Conan Doyle Estate. [32]
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
William Hooker Gillette was an American actor-manager, playwright, and stage manager in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage and in a 1916 silent film.
"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom, and McClure's in the United States, under the title "The Adventure of the Final Problem" in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the final set of twelve Sherlock Holmes short stories by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976.
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eighth story of twelve in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was originally published in Strand Magazine in February 1892.
"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was originally published in Collier's in the United States on 26 March 1904, and in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in April 1904. It is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905).
Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
"How Watson Learned the Trick" is a Sherlock Holmes parody written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1924. It concerns Doctor Watson attempting to demonstrate to Holmes how he has learned the latter's "superficial trick" of logical deduction by giving a summary of Holmes' current state of mind and plans for the day ahead, only for Holmes to then reveal that every single one of Watson's deductions is incorrect.
Richard Gordon Lancelyn Green was a British scholar of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, and was generally considered the world's foremost scholar of these topics.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes is an American detective television series syndicated in the autumn of 1954, based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and H. Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade. Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.
The Sherlockian game is the pastime of attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from the 56 short stories and four novels that make up the Sherlock Holmes canon by Arthur Conan Doyle. It treats Holmes and Watson as real people and uses aspects of the canonical stories combined with the history of the era of the tales' settings to construct fanciful biographies of the pair.
"The Story of the Lost Special", sometimes abbreviated to "The Lost Special", is a mystery short story by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in The Strand Magazine in August 1898. A minor character in the story is possibly implied to be Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, though his name is not used and this character does not provide the mystery's solution. The story's narrative mode is third person, subjective, though the narrator is not identified.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Sherlock Holmes is a four-act play by William Gillette and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, based on Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes. After three previews it premiered on Broadway November 6, 1899, at the Garrick Theatre in New York City.
Arthur J. Raffles is a fictional character created in 1898 by E. W. Hornung, brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, an inversion of Holmes – he is a "gentleman thief", living at the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket as a gentleman for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. He is called the "Amateur Cracksman" and often, at first, differentiates between him and the "professors" – professional criminals from the lower classes.
"The Field Bazaar" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published on November 20, 1896 in a special "Bazaar Number" of The Student, a publication of the students' representative council at Edinburgh University. It is a Sherlock Holmes story, published under Conan Doyle's byline and featuring both Holmes and his partner, Dr. John Watson. It is, however, treated by most experts as a parody or pastiche not suitable for inclusion in the traditional 60-story canon of Sherlock Holmes, though there are dissenters.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is an American old-time radio show that aired on US radio networks between 1930 and 1936. The series was adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories by scriptwriter Edith Meiser. For most of the series, Richard Gordon played Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell played Dr. Watson.
Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. was a 2014 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in response to an appeal filed by the defendants against the 2013 ruling of the U.S. District Court for Northern district of Illinois. These decisions, by the District Court and the Court of the Seventh Circuit, clarified the validity of the use of characters of Sherlock Holmes and his colleague Dr. John Watson, and the story elements, in unlicensed works. Further, the scope of using characters, in the public domain was also clarified.