Sherlockiana

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Sherlockiana encompasses various categories of materials and content related to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle. The word "Sherlockiana" has been used for literary studies and scholarship concerning Sherlock Holmes, [1] Sherlock Holmes pastiches in print and other media such as films, [2] and memorabilia associated with Sherlock Holmes. [3] [1] Sherlockiana may be "anything about, inspired by, or tangentially concerning" Sherlock Holmes. [4]

Contents

Fiction

Non-canonical works of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, by creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle, have been referred to as examples of "Sherlockiana". [5] Charles Spencer, former theatre critic for The Daily Telegraph , used the term to refer to the 2009–12 releases of the novel The House of Silk , the television series Sherlock , and two Sherlock Holmes films, Sherlock Holmes and its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , as representative of a "golden age of Sherlockiana." [2]

Literary studies

The cover of the 1979 printing of The Encyclopadeia Sherlockiana by Jack Tracy The Encyclopadeia Sherlockiana.jpg
The cover of the 1979 printing of The Encyclopadeia Sherlockiana by Jack Tracy

When used to refer to literary studies, "Sherlockiana" includes essays and works about Sherlock Holmes such as Vincent Starrett's 1933 book The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes . [1] Some of these studies concern the Sherlockian game, a pastime of attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Holmes and Watson. [6] The word is used in the title of The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, first published in 1977 and republished as The Ultimate Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia in 1987, a reference text containing an exhaustive list of over 3,500 people, places, and things associated with the universe of Sherlock Holmes. [7] The quarterly journal The Baker Street Journal is subtitled An Irregular Quarterly of Sherlockiana. [8]

Memorabilia

The term "Sherlockiana" has been used to refer to objects connected to Sherlock Holmes. Collections of Sherlockiana may include audio-visual recordings, books, magazines, newspaper clippings, art, clothing, advertising, stationary, and any other items associated with Holmes. [3] The University of Minnesota contains the world's largest archive of Sherlockiana as of 2015, a large portion of which was bequeathed by American collector John Bennett Shaw [9] upon his death in 1994. [3]

Monuments

The Sherlock Holmes Museum in 2013 The Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street - geograph.org.uk - 3904588.jpg
The Sherlock Holmes Museum in 2013

The interest in works about Sherlock Holmes has extended to intrigue by the United States Smithsonian Museums about the original location of 221B Baker Street. [10] The investigation found that the supposed location of Holmes and Watson's flat did not exist during the early stories such as A Study in Scarlet. [10] However in 1990, the Sherlock Holmes International Society opened up the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street. [10] Furthermore, statues of Holmes displays "Sherlockian" culture as idolizing elements of the world.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherlock Holmes</span> Fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baker Street Irregulars</span> Fictional characters in Sherlock Holmes stories

The Baker Street Irregulars are fictional characters who appear in three Sherlock Holmes stories, specifically two novels and one short story, by Arthur Conan Doyle. They are street boys who are employed by Holmes as intelligence agents. The name has subsequently been adopted by other organizations, most notably a prestigious and exclusive literary society founded in the United States by Christopher Morley in 1934.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">221B Baker Street</span> Address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes

221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the United Kingdom, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter may indicate a separate address within a larger, often residential building. Baker Street in the late 19th century was a high-class residential district, and Holmes's apartment would probably have been part of a Georgian terrace.

<i>The Canary Trainer</i> 1993 novel by Nicholas Meyer

The Canary Trainer: From the Memoirs of John H. Watson is a 1993 Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Nicholas Meyer. Like The Seven Percent Solution and The West End Horror, The Canary Trainer was published as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson. In "The Adventure of Black Peter", an original Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story from 1904, Watson mentions that his companion recently arrested "Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East-End of London." This Wilson is not related to the eponymous character of Meyer's novel. Meyer's "trainer" is Erik, the principal figure of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. It is from this unchronicled tale that The Notorious Canary Trainers take their name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inspector Lestrade</span> Fictional character from Sherlock Holmes

Detective Inspector G. Lestrade, or Mr. Lestrade, is a fictional character appearing in several of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Lestrade's first appearance was in the first Sherlock Holmes story, the novel A Study in Scarlet, which was published in 1887. The last story in which he appears is the short story "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", which was first published in 1924 and was included in the final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Baker Street Irregulars</span> Literary society

The Baker Street Irregulars is an organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley. As of 2015, the nonprofit organization had about 300 members worldwide.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherlock Holmes Museum</span> Private museum in London

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a privately run museum in London, England, dedicated to the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It is the world's first museum dedicated to the literary character Sherlock Holmes. It opened in 1990 and is situated on Baker Street, bearing the number 221B by permission of the City of Westminster, although it lies between numbers 237 and 241, near the north end of Baker Street in central London close to Regent's Park.

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 has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canon of Sherlock Holmes</span> Things confirmed about Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles stories

Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 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 aficionados 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.

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.

Mrs. Hudson is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. She is the landlady of 221B Baker Street, the London residence in which Sherlock Holmes lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie S. Klinger</span> American attorney and writer (born 1946)

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.

Robert Keith Leavitt (1895–1967) was a Harvard-educated New York City advertising copywriter who turned to non-fiction writing. He was the author of many books, including a history of Webster's Dictionary and "The Chip on Grandma's Shoulder" (1954.) 'Bob' Leavitt was also the longtime historian of the original The Baker Street Irregulars, devoted to all things Holmesian, about which he wrote in his "The Origins of 221B Worship."

<i>The Speckled Band</i> (1931 film) 1931 film

The Speckled Band is a 1931 British mystery film directed by Jack Raymond and starring Lyn Harding, Raymond Massey and Angela Baddeley. It is an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's original 1892 story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and the 1910 play he adapted from it, The Speckled Band.

Sherlock Holmes fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The fans are known as Sherlockians or Holmesians. Many fans of Sherlock Holmes participate in societies around the world, and engage in a variety of activities such as discussion, tourism, and collecting.

"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 Baker Street Journal is a quarterly journal devoted to Sherlockiana published by The Baker Street Irregulars. Leslie S. Klinger has called it "the leading publication" in the study of Sherlock Holmes.

The Revenge of the Hound is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Michael Hardwick, originally published in 1987. It is Hardwick's second Holmes novel after 1979's The Prisoner of the Devil.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Morley, Christopher; Steven Rothman (1990). The Standard Doyle Company: Christopher Morley on Sherlock Holmes. Fordham Univ Press. pp. 16, 68, 161. ISBN   978-0-8232-1292-7.
  2. 1 2 Spencer, Charles (19 December 2011). "Sherlock Holmes: we are living in a golden age of Sherlockiana". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 Groves, Derham (2000). Out of the Ordinary: Popular Art, Architecture and Design. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 199–215. ISBN   9781527551428.
  4. "The origins of Sherlockiana". Rare Books Digest. 17 May 2020. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  5. Faye, Lyndsay (2 January 2019). "The Year in Sherlockiana". CrimeReads. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  6. "Sherlockiana". The Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  7. Tracy, Jack (1987). The Ultimate Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia. Gramercy. ISBN   0-517-65444-X.
  8. Rothman, Steven (ed.). "The Baker Street Journal, Vol. 61, No. 4, Winter 2011" (PDF). The Baker Street Irregulars. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  9. Mumford, Tracy (27 June 2015). "Exploring the largest Sherlock Holmes archive in the world". Minnesota Public Radio News. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 Magazine, Smithsonian; Stamp, Jimmy. "The Mystery of 221B Baker Street". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-01-29.