The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

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The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes
ExploitsOfSherlockHolmes.jpg
First edition cover (UK)
Author Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Detective fiction
Publisher Random House (US)
John Murray (UK)
Publication date
1954
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages313

The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes is a short story collection of twelve Sherlock Holmes pastiches, first published in 1954. It was written by Adrian Conan Doyle, who was the son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes), and by John Dickson Carr, who was the authorised biographer of the elder Conan Doyle. [1] The first six stories were written in collaboration by the two writers, while the last six stories were written solely by Adrian Conan Doyle. [2]

Contents

Each story in this collection is postscripted with a quote from one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, making reference to an undocumented Holmes case that inspired it.

Writing

In 1945, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian Conan Doyle, began a collaboration with his father's biographer, John Dickson Carr, to publish twelve new exploits of Sherlock Holmes and Watson (of which one appeared in Life magazine and the other eleven stories were published in Collier's magazine [3] ) based on cases that had been referred to in passing in the four canonical novels and 56 original short stories of Sherlock Holmes, but which had never been written up by Watson (see the below mentioned postscripts found at the end of each of the twelve new exploits). [4]

The first story was illustrated by Adolf Hallman in Life, and the other stories were illustrated by Robert Fawcett in Collier's. [5] In 1954, the collection was published by Random House, New York, with illustrations by Jerome Kuhl and a jacket illustration by Jules Gotlieb. It was published in the same year by John Murray, London. [6]

The collaboration was not smooth, as Douglas G. Greene relates in John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles. [7] There is some doubt about who wrote what—though at times Carr's highly recognisable style breaks through the convention of pastiching the original Conan Doyle stories. In any case, the book published in 1954 was not a great success at the time, though collectors take an interest in it, and the experiment of writing more new Sherlock Holmes exploits was not repeated by these two writers.

In 1963 John Murray published two paperback volumes which divided the stories into The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and More Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr. The first title contains the last six stories listed below, the second the first six. Greene suggests that authorship may be more complex.

Stories

The stories contained in the collection are: [1]

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References

  1. 1 2 Redmond, Christopher (2009). Sherlock Holmes Handbook: Second Edition. Dundurn Press. p. 213. ISBN   9781459718982.
  2. ↑ The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. 1954. p. 4.
  3. ↑ Bunson, Matthew (1997). Encyclopedia Sherlockiana. Simon & Schuster. p. 76. ISBN   0-02-861679-0.
  4. ↑ Riley, Dick; McAllister, Pam (1999). The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes . Contiuum. p.  150. ISBN   0-8264-1116-9.
  5. ↑ De Waal, Ronald Burt (1974). The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Bramhall House. pp. 424–425. ISBN   0-517-217597.
  6. ↑ "USH Volume 4, Section XI -- Parodies, Pastiches, Burlesques, Travesties and Satires". University of Minnesota Libraries. Archived from the original on 12 September 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2021.
  7. ↑ Greene, Douglas (1995). John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles. New York: Otto Penzler. pp. 357–367. ISBN   1-883402-47-6.
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