Sherlock Holmes Archives

A Scandal in Bohemia

August 31, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, web links, and further reading

A Scandal in Bohemia was first published in July 1891 in The Strand Magazine with illustrations by Sydney Paget. As a stand-out character and detective hero, Sherlock Holmes had first appeared in Conan Doyle’s earlier novel A Study in Scarlet (1887) – but it wasn’t until the monthly stories appeared that the fictional character began to seize the public’s imagination. This effect was amplified by the publication in America in 1892 of these thirteen monthly episodes as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This began a popularity for the figure of Holmes which continues to this day. There have been any number of radio, stage, and film adaptations of the stories, and there is currently a very successful television series in which the stories are transposed into present day settings.

A Scandal in Bohemia – critical commentary

Mise en scene

The setting, characters, and historical context of the story are all convincingly realistic. The story is set in a London that is thoroughly recognisable. Holmes lives in Baker Street in Marylebone, and Irene Adler in St John’s Wood. Many other places are mentioned – Edgware Road, Regent Street, and Charing Cross – and because they actually exist they help to establish realistic setting. Generations of tourists have walked up and down Baker Street searching for 221B – which is an invention on Conan Doyle’s part.

Watson gives an exact date at the start of the story – 20th March 1888. The king is from Bohemia, which was a separate state as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire during the nineteenth century – and still exists as part of the Czech Republic. He arrives in a ‘brougham’ – a Victorian horse carriage; and the driver is paid ‘half a guinea’. These details correspond to the historical picture we have of the world around that time and therefore make the background to the story seem credible.

The story is populated by a married doctor plus his friend and former flat-mate, an amateur detective. The other characters include a foreign aristocrat and an opera singer. Although Sherlock Holmes has unusually developed skills and Kings are not exactly commonplace, these characters form part of a world which seems reasonable, not unlike our own. They help to make the fictional world Conan Doyle offers us realistic.

The story begins in the streets of London, then continues to Holmes’ first floor apartment with its bachelor accoutrements of cigars and drinks cabinet. It moves on to the mews where servants are working, then a church in the Edgware Road and the avenue where Briony Lodge is situated. It reaches its climax inside the drawing room of the ‘bijou villa’ from which Irene Adler has recently decamped, and it ends as Watson and Holmes take to the streets of London again. All of these locations help to create a perfectly credible milieu.

The construction of character

The principal point of interest in the Sherlock Holmes stories and the reason that they have been so popular is the character of Holmes himself. The complete character study of Holmes can be best constructed from details about him which are scattered throughout the stories. However, from A Scandal in Bohemia alone we learn that he has an international reputation as a detective and is well known amongst European royalty. He has acute powers of observation and an ability to interpret visual data (see below). He is a master of disguise, and is able to transform his demeanour and actions into those of the person he is imitating.

In addition, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of society backed up by an archive of information on crime he keeps on index cards. He alternates between periods of lassitude which he spends in brooding reflection, and periods of dynamic activity in pursuit of his client’s problems.

Watson describes him as a man who ‘loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul’ – which tells us that he is radically independent. He also has a ‘cold, precise, admirably balanced mind’. He is an intellectual, one who sneers at ‘the softer passions’ – which is what makes his admiration for Irene Adler such an exception. He is also given to offering witty, epigrammatic apercus such as “When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing she values most … A married woman grabs at her baby – an unmarried one reaches for her jewel box”.

Holmes is philosophical, brilliant, charismatic, benevolent and enigmatic. At the end of the story he shows a lofty disregard for the King by ignoring his handshake, and his non-materialistic values are revealed when he chooses the photo over the proffered emerald and gold ring.

One rather surprising detail we learn about him is that he is a cocaine addict – what we might today call ‘an occasional user’. Fortunately, this does not seem to hamper his powers as a detective, but it does reinforce the idea that he a social ‘outsider’. We learn in a later story that he also plays the violin. All of this adds up to making him a fascinating and complex individual. If we add to this picture his lean, angular appearance, the deerstalker hat, and the meerschaum pipe, it is not surprising that he has become an iconic figure in popular culture.

Deduction or induction?

But of course the most amazing thing about Holmes is the manner in which he able to combine acute observation with profound intelligence and an incisive system of reasoning to reach revealing insights and surprisingly deft conclusions. It is a method of ratiocination clearly modeled on Edgar Allen Poe’s detective Auguste Dupin.

Holmes analyses the watermarks of the paper on which the King has written his introductory note, and works out from the abbreviations that the paper has been produced in Bohemia. Then he goes on to look at the message itself and observes that though the writing is in English, it uses a distinctively German syntax – with a verb at the end of the sentence.

Amongst critics there is often disagreement on the question of Holmes’ methods of detection. He observes very small details of a person’s physical appearance or clothing, and from these details arrives at a general understanding of their occupation, their habits, or their recent movements. This method of detection illustrates his acute powers of observation and often reveals his encyclopedic knowledge of arcane topics – such as being able to recognise the ashes of different brands of cigar.

In Watson’s narrative, he calls Holmes’ method ‘deduction’ – “I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction.” Watson (and by implication Conan Doyle) is employing the term in its everyday sense of seeing a relationship between one thing and another which doesn’t at first seem to be connected to it.

But the method, strictly speaking, is ‘induction’ – a form of reasoning which derives general principles from specific observation. This is also known as ‘bottom up’ reasoning. Holmes notices on Watson’s finger the marks of silver nitrate, which was originally used as a disinfectant and to cauterise wounds. From this he reasons that Watson has probably resumed his former occupation as a doctor.

Deductive reasoning works the other way round – and is known as ‘top down’ logic. This starts from a general principle then works down to a specific instance. All men are mortal; Socrates was a man; therefore Socrates was mortal. Another term for this process is ‘inference’. This is a minor issue – and many people accept and use the term ‘deduction’ for both forms of reasoning.

Close reading

Close reading is not a skill that can be acquired in just a few minutes. It requires detailed attention to language, wide literary experience, and concentrated reflection on the technical minutiae of texts. These strands of analysis need to be brought together many times over. The skill also involves consideration of a text in at four levels – linguistic, semantic, structural, and cultural. That is – the words of a text in their grammatical sense; what the words mean in the context of the story; what links they might have with the overall structure of the work; and the broader meanings of the text in terms of cultural history.

In one sense close reading is quite like the analytic method used by Sherlock Holmes himself. It squeezes the maximum amount of meaning out of quite small observations. For instance what follows is a close reading of the opening sentence of the story: ‘To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman’. And in fact my observations will focus on just two words in the sentence ‘is’ and ‘the‘.

Linguistic. The use of the present tense – ‘she is’ – strikes an interesting note here. Most fiction is narrated in the past tense, but the present tense is sometimes used to give a sense of immediacy and urgency. This effect is reinforced here by the brevity and directness of the sentence. It starts the story on a bright note.

Semantic. The term ‘is’ also suggests something else here – that the high regard and rivalry between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler has originated in the past but is still going on in the fictional present of the story. This is reinforced by the addition of the adverb ‘always’. Yet we learn from Watson at the end of the paragraph that she is the late Irene Adler. It is not clear if this means she is dead or that the episode recorded in the story simply took place in the past. Either way, the fact remains that she continues to have an influence on him

Structural. The opening sentence of the story is rather neatly echoed by the sentence with which it ends: ‘When he speaks of Irene Adler … it is always under the honourable title of the woman. This small structural link using repetition introduces an element of symmetry or pattern into the narrative, making it coherent and satisfying. It is an indication that the story is well designed.

Cultural. At the end of the Victorian and the beginning of the Edwardian period there were a number of male writers who produced work which featured a woman who is idealised, inaccessible, mysterious, and often either beautiful or cruel – or both. One thinks of Rider Haggard’s She (1886-87) or many of the stories of Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham.

This was a period in which women were becoming more socially and personally assertive – claiming the right to own property and the right to vote for instance. Holmes’ reverence for Irene Adler – a talented, enterprising, and clever woman – reflects this broader historical development, all in just two words – ‘the woman’.

A Scandal in Bohemia – study resources

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Penguin – Amazon UK

The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Penguin – Amazon US

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Wordsworth – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Wordsworth – Amazon US

Sherlock Holmes – 1939 classic DVD box set – Amazon UK

Sherlock – 2014 DVD box set – Amazon UK

A Scandal in Bohemia – explanatory notes

gasogene	a soda syphon
vizard	a half mask covering just the eyes
cabinet photograph	small portrait, which replaced the visiting card
John Hare	a famous English actor-manager
iodoform	antiseptic compound of iodine

A Scandal in Bohemia – plot summaries

Short summary

Sherlock Holmes, a famous detective, is commissioned by the King of Bohemia to retrieve a potentially compromising photograph from Irene Adler, his former mistress. Holmes sets out in disguise to search her house but is sidetracked when he becomes caught up as a witness at her wedding. Later he returns and tricks her into revealing the hiding place. When he goes back next day however she has left a note saying she perceived his ruse and has emigrated, taking the photograph with her.

Long summary

Doctor Watson calls on his old flat mate in Baker Street, London. Sherlock Holmes is a famous detective with amazing powers of observation. They are visited by the hereditary King of Bohemia who is about to be married but is being blackmailed by Irene Adler, an opera singer with whom he has had an affair. She is threatening to reveal a compromising photograph.

Next day Watson visits Holmes who has been making a reconnaissance of Adler’s house whilst in disguise. Holmes learns that Adler has an admirer Godfrey Norton who is a lawyer. Norton and Adler leave the house hurriedly and Holmes follows them to a church, where he is pressed into acting as a witness to their marriage.

Holmes plans to make an illegal entry into the house the same night, and enlists Watson’s help. Disguised as a clergyman, he is at the house when a pre-arranged fight breaks out in the street. He dashes to protect Adler, and appears to be badly injured. He is taken into the house to recover, where he signals to Watson, who throws a smoke bomb into the house and raises the cry of ‘Fire!’. Ten minutes later, as they leave, Holmes explains how Adler revealed the hiding place of the photo.

Next morning the King accompanies them to Adler’s house, but she has already left England, never to return. She has left a letter for Holmes explaining that she recognised him and his methods, and she has retained the photo as a guarantee against any future action from the King.

A Scandal in Bohemia – further reading

Biography

John Dickson Carr, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London: John Murray, 1949.

Michael Coren, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London: Bloomsbury, 1995.

John L/ Lellenberg, The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Andrew Lycett, Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008.

Pierre Nordon, Conan Doyle: A Biography, London: John Murray, 1966.

Hesketh Pearson, Conan Doyle – His Life and Work, London: Methuen, 1943.

Julian Symons, Portrait of an Artist: Conan Doyle, London: Whizzard Press, 1979.

Criticism

Don Richard Cox, Arthur Conan Doyle, New York: Ungar, 1985.

Owen Dudley Edwards, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1983.

Trevor Hall, Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies, London: Duckworth, 1969.

Michael and Mollie Hardwick, The Sherlock Holmes Companion, London: John Murray, 1962.

Howard Haycraft, The Art of the Mystery Story, Caroll & Graf Publishers, 1983.

Harold Orel (ed), Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Hall & Co, 1992.

Julian Symons, Bloody Murder, London: Faber, 1972.

Robin Winks, The Historian as Detective, London: Harper Collins, 1969.

Jaqueline A. Yaffe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Boston: Twayne, 1967.

A Scandal in Bohemia – web links

Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia
Comprehensive biographical notes on the detective, extracted from all the stories and novels.

The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
An active literary and social society with special events, a journal, meetings, newsletter, and shop.

Discovering Sherlock Holmes
Repository at Stanford University – includes facsimile reproductions of stories from the original Strand Magazine

More 19C Authors
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

A Study in Scarlet

August 23, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, further reading

A Study in Scarlet (1888) marks the first ever appearance in print of Sherlock Holmes, the now world-famous detective. It was Arthur Conan Doyle’s first book to be published – for which he received the meagre sum of £25 for all UK rights. The novel first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887 and was then republished as a single volume by Ward Lock & Co in July 1888.

A Study in Scarlet – commentary

Structure

The first part of A Study in Scarlet follows what I have called elsewhere the classic Sherlock Holmes formula. First we are introduced to the racy and enigmatic figure of Holmes himself. He is part-Bohemian, a violin player who relaxes with cocaine, and a freelance consultant detective who outwits Scotland Yard.

Then we are given a demonstration of his amazing powers of observation and clinical analysis. The story is related from the point of view of his colleague Dr John Watson. Next, someone (or a message) arrives at 221B Baker Street with details of a crime that has stumped the police.

Holmes then works out the solution to this problem by a combination of logic, closely observed details, his encyclopedic knowledge of crime, and a process of ratiocination. He then sets out in a series of detective-like escapades to prove that his theory is correct.

It is important to note that the mystery is solved via a process of thinking, the logic of which is usually revealed later. The adventures of pursuing criminals or witnesses are only necessary to prove that his theory is correct.

That is exactly the structure of Part 1 of the narrative of A Study in Scarlet. We are introduced to Holmes; he demonstrates his skills; he is presented with almost a locked-room conundrum – a murdered body in an empty house. He then solves the crime and delivers the culprit in handcuffs.

But in this, his first published work, Conan Doyle was presenting his new hero-sleuth via the form of a novel. This is a literary genre that normally requires more substance than the Sherlock Holmes formula provides. So in Part 2, Conan Doyle switches to what is essentially the ‘back story’ that has led to the crimes being committed.

This switch requires not only a change of location and time – from urban London boroughs to the plains of Utah earlier in the century. It is also a change in narrative mode from John Watson’s first person account to an impersonal third-person history of events. This is done without any subsequent explanation of how these two parts of the narrative are related.

The new topics covered in Part 2 introduce a catastrophic rift in the coherence of A Study in Scarlet, from which the novel never really recovers. We are introduced to scene settings of what was then the American ‘Frontier’ which might have been lifted straight out of a Fenimore Cooper novel. There are lengthy explanations for the strange beliefs and behaviour of the Mormons (the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints). The story-line also includes internal rivalries amongst the religious settlers which will explain later complexities in the plot.

This back story is simply too long-winded and complex, the timescale too regressive, and the introduction of significant new characters too disruptive to produce a satisfying whole. The novel could easily have been rescued by eliminating all the back story of Part 2, and simply following the arrest of Jefferson Hope with the explication Holmes gives in the final chapter of the novel.

It seems that Conan Doyle was aware of this weakness, for at a later date he described his own production as ‘having much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition by Euclid’. Certainly he did not make the same mistake again when introducing Holmes as a character in the novel-length work The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). This work maintains its unity of characters, theme, location, and dramatic continuity.

The explanation

Most stories featuring Sherlock Holmes turn on his ability to interpret small details of evidence overlooked by others – particularly his rivals Lestrade and Gregson of the Yard. He deals with the first set of clues in A Study in Scarlet plausibly enough. The dead body in an empty room and the writing in blood on the wall provide him with clues that the muderer was tall, strong, that the blood was the murderer’s, that poison was involved, and that the word ‘RACHE’ on the wall is German.

These are all typical elements in a Holmes story. But Conan Doyle, perhaps because he was tackling a novel or perhaps because this was Holmes’s first fictional appearance, pushes these analytic processes to a level which strains credulity. We are asked to believe that Holmes can recognise and discriminate amongst the footprints of several people who have walked across a muddy pathway – not once in the same direction, but more than once in both directions.

Jefferson Hope (the murderer), Enoch Drebber (the victim), constable John Rance, and his colleague Murcher all trample across the path leading to the empty house on the night of the murder. But we are asked to believe that Holmes is able to accurately work out the sequence of their comings and goings, as well as similar movements of Hope’s horse-drawn cab.

These analyses are simply not credible – even making allowances for what is essentially a work of popular fiction. Some of the later Holmes stories have similar weaknesses, but they are piled on to an unacceptable degree in A Study in Scarlet. Together with the structural flaw examined above, they render the novel an interesting first attempt or a flawed prototype for the successful shorter fictions that were to follow.

Deduction or induction?

The most amazing thing about Holmes is the manner in which he is able to combine acute observation with an incisive system of reasoning to reach revealing insights and surprisingly deft conclusions. It is a method of ratiocination clearly modelled on Edgar Allen Poe’s detective Auguste Dupin.

In Watson’s narrative, Doyle sometimes calls Holmes’ method ‘deduction’ and other times ‘analysis’. Watson (and by implication Conan Doyle) is employing the term ‘deduction’ in its everyday sense of seeing a relationship between one thing and another which doesn’t at first seem to be connected to it.

But the method, strictly speaking, is ‘induction’ – a form of reasoning which derives general principles from specific observation. This is also known as ‘bottom up’ reasoning.

Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be … There are few people however, who, if you told them the result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.

A Study in Scarlet – study resources

The best current editions of the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories are those published in the Oxford World’s Classics paperback series. Each volume contains a critical introduction, a note on the text, a bibliography of further reading, a biographical chronology of Conan Doyle, and most importantly a series of explanatory notes giving historical, geographical, and scientific information about details mentioned in the text.

A Study in Scarlet – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

A Study in Scarlet – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

Complete Works of Conan Doyle – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – plot summary

Part 1

1. Dr John Watson has retired injured from the army. He is introduced to Sherlock Holmes with a view to their sharing lodgings. Holmes is a mercurial character who dabbles in scientific experiments.

2. Holmes has a patchy grasp of general knowledge but a profound understanding of forensic science and anatomy. He has written papers on the philosophy of deduction and works as a freelance consultant detective.

3. Holmes is summoned by letter to assist in an unsolved murder in Brixton. He examines the dead body in an empty room whilst Scotland Yard detectives Lestrade and Gregson theorise about an explanation. There is rivalry between Holmes and the detectives – and between each other.

4. Holmes delivers to Watson a working explanation of the crime, devised from a minute examination of the room and its contents. They interview the policeman who discovered the body, who confirms Holmes’ description of the potential murderer.

5. Holmes advertises for the owner of a woman’s ring found at the crime scene. It is answered by an old woman who then gives them the slip when pursued.

6. The newspapers give a variety of accounts of the crime. Gregson arrives at Baker Street claiming he has arrested the murderer – the son of the murdered man’s landlady. His rival Lestrade arrives to announce the murder of Drebber’s secretary, Stargerson.

7. Lestrade describes tracking down Stargerson and finding him murdered. Holmes claims from the details now established that he has a complete answer to the mystery. He tests this by poisoning a dog. He is challenged by Lestrade and Gregson to reveal his findings, and when a cab driver is summoned, Holmes pronounces him the murderer – Jefferson Hope.

Part 2

1. Many years earlier, John Ferrier and his adopted daughter Lucy are lost in the wilderness of Utah, USA. They are dying of thirst and starvation, but are eventually rescued by a caravan of Mormons.

2. Brigham Young establishes the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City. After many years Ferrier becomes a successful and rich farmer. Lucy is courted by Jefferson Hope, a hunter and frontiersman.

3. Brigham Young insists that because she is still single, Lucy should marry one of the Four Elders. Ferrier is given a month to decide.

4. Elders Drebber and Stargerson menace Ferrier with their claims for Lucy. With only two days left, Jefferson Hope arrives and rescues Ferrier and Lucy. They set off for Carson City in Nevada.

5. When Hope goes hunting for food, he returns to find that Ferrier has been killed and Lucy abducted by the Mormons. Returning to Salt Lake City, Hope learns that Stargerson shot Ferrier and Lucy has been forcibly married to Drebber.

When Lucy dies a month later, Hope seizes her wedding ring and begins a long pursuit of Drebber and Stargerson, seeking vengeance.

6. Watson then reports the confession of the captured Hope. He followed the two Elders to London and stalked them as a cab driver. He takes Drebber as a drunken passenger and presents him with a box of pills, some of which are poisoned. Drebber takes one and dies. Hope then goes to Stangerson’s hotel and after a struggle stabs him in the heart.

7. Hope dies in prison. Holmes explains to Watson how he analysed details of the case. Lestrade and Gregson get all the credit for solving the crime.

A Study in Scarlet – characters

Dr John Watson	a retired army medical officer
Sherlock Holmes	a freelance consultant detective
Lestrade	a Scotland Yard detective
Tobias Gregson	a Scotland Yard detective
Enoch Drebber	a Mormon Elder who marries Lucy
Joseph Stargerson	a Mormon Elder, Drebber’s ‘secretary’
Jefferson Hope	an American frontiersman and hunter
John Ferrier	a frontiersman who becomes a rich farmer
Lucy Ferrier	his adopted daughter

More Sherlock Holmes
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Hound of the Baskervilles

September 23, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and further reading

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is possibly the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories – for three very good reasons. The first is that it is an intriguing murder mystery related in the fast-moving style of the best popular fiction. The second is that it incorporates a vivid and dramatic myth of an unseen but deadly beast which stalks the moors and threatens the fabric of polite society. The third is that it was the basis for a number of screen adaptations, including the very successful 1939 version starring Basil Rathbone. And of course it has as its stand-out hero the best known detective of all time – Sherlock Holmes.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – a note on the text

The Hound of the Baskervilles first appeared as monthly instalments in the Strand Magazine between August 1901 and April 1902, with illustrations by Sydney Paget. The first single volume book version was published by George Newnes in March 1902. The serial publication was a great success, and it is worth noting that it appeared alongside an equally poular tale, The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells.

Some critics class it as a long story rather than a novel. This is a view supported by the full title of the original which is The Hound of the Baskervilles – Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, So there are some reasons for regarding it as merely a longer example of the case studies that are collected in the series of short stories that constitute The Adventures, The Case-Book, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. But the length of the text (50,000 words), the complexities of the plot, and the number of characters are more characteristic of a novel. It seems to make more sense to classify it along with its predecessors A Study in Scarlet (1888) and The Sign of the Four (1890) as a short novel.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – commentary

The method of detection

Most people will read any Sherlock Holmes story for the pleasure of witnessing his famous inductive method at work. Holmes observes very small details, and from them identifies larger issues and their causes at work. This short novel begins with a demonstration of exactly this method. A visitor to the famous consulting rooms at 221B Baker Street has left behind a walking stick. Holmes challenges Watson to apply the method, which Watson does, with partial success. But then Holmes tops Watson’s observations with an even more detailed account of the stick’s owner – all of which is proven to be true when he appears to recover it. Dr James Mortimer is exactly the sort of person Holmes has described (although he is something of a superfluous character in the narrative).

The ‘method’ is often described as ‘deduction , but technically, in philosophic terms, it is ‘induction’. For a discussion of the distinction between the two, see the tutorial on A Scandal in Bohemia.

The myth of the beast

One of the strongest horror elements of the novel is the idea of a gigantic and man-killing beast roaming loose on the Moors. The origin of the curse of the Baskervilles is that of a dastardly aristocrat who abducts a young lower-class woman. When she escapes he gives chase with his hunting hounds. But the villain is himself killed by a ‘a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye had rested upon’.

It is not surprising to learn that the beast is ‘tearing at his throat’ – for all this is just one of the ingredients of this popular myth. Other elements are the Moors, the Beast which is heard howling but cannot be seen, and the deaths from fear alone. Conan Doyle adds a further layer of horror by giving Stapleton’s beast luminous jaws and eyes – rather unscientifically ignoring the fact that phosphorous would have a poisonous effect on the animal .

Such myths are still common today: tabloid newspaper frequently report of sightings of ‘the Monster of Exmoor’, ‘the Beast of Bodmin’, and (more recently) ‘the Essex Lion’. All of these ‘wild beast’ sightings (accompanied by fuzzy photographs or videos) turn out to be nothing much more than large cats or dogs. It is something or an ironic anti-climax in the novel to discover that Stapleton actually purchased his dog from a pet shop in the Fullham Road.

Mythical beasts almost always inhabit remote moors, dense forests, or other inaccessible regions where their existence cannot easily be verified. The same applies to reports of ‘the Abominable Snowman’, ‘Bigfoot’, and ‘the Loch Ness Monster’. To make matters topographically more dangerous, Conan Doyle also throws in a swamp, the Grimpen Mire, in which we are led to believe the villainous Stapleton meets his own well-deserved end.

In other words, the novel draws upon an idea which appeals to the popular imagination, even though there is very little evidence for its existence. It is an idea to which people are attracted – almost as if they wish to believe it exists. Of course Conan Doyle does produce a real (fictional) hound for the purposes of the story – but this is of secondary importance compared to the power of the myth.

The sensation novel

Wilkie Collins is often credited with the invention of both the detective novel and the sensation novel. Whilst Sherlock Holmes probably owes more to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective hero Auguste Dupin, The Hound of the Baskervilles certainly has many elements of the sensation novel which enjoyed a vogue in both popular and highbrow fiction in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Sensation novels dealt with issues that pushed at the limits of what could be accepted in the realistic narrative. These were issues of crime, bigamy, secret identities, forged wills, blackmail, illegitimacy, and madness. The Hound has a full complement of these elements in its makeup.

The story begins with a case of forced imprisonment and aristocratic crime – when the dastardly Hugo Baskerville abducts the yeoman’s daughter and locks her in the upper part of the ancestral Hall. This incident is followed by the sudden and violent death of Hugo when the great black beast on the moor tears at his throat with its fangs.

This establishes the curse of the Baskervilles, which seems to repeat itself when Sir Charles meets his sudden and unexplained death in the Yew Alley of Baskerville Hall. But this incident (we learn later) has been engineered by someone masquerading under not one but two false identities.

The villain Stapleton is actually a Baskerville, but having stolen money and changed his name to Vandeleur, he returns to England from South America and sets up a school that fails ignominiously. He then changes his name yet again to Stapleton as part of his complex machinations.

These include another form of false identity (technically, personation) when he passes off his wife Beryl as his sister. This in its turn introduces very obliquely the notion of incest. But Stapleton also encourages a romantic liaison between Sir Henry and Beryl, since he himself has (illegally) proposed marriage to Mrs Laura Lyons. This complication produces an element that is difficult to name or categorise, but perhaps comes closest to potential bigamy..

This sexual and legal ambiguity is reinforced by Stapleton paying court to Mrs Lyons. She has a certain amount of money, and he has promised to marry her if she can obtain a divorce. This raises questions of either adultery or bigamy. However, Stapleton’s personal relationship with his wife also includes the sensation element of domestic violence. He bullies her and beats her into submission.

Sherlock Holmes makes the observation that “There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear; or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions”. When Stapleton beats his wife and ties her up in the house, she becomes a form of ‘madwoman in the attic’ – another stock figure from the sensation novel.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – study resources

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Penguin – Amazon UK

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Penguin – Amazon US

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Wordsworth – Amazon UK

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Wordsworth – Amazon US

The Hound of the Baskervilles – 1939 classic DVD – Amazon UK

Sherlock Holmes – classics DVD box set – Amazon UK

Sherlock – 2014 DVD box set – Amazon UK

The Hound of the Baskervilles – chapter summaries

1. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson analyse a walking stick left behind by a visitor, concluding that its owner is a medical man who has retired to a country practice. The man himself James Mortimer appears, confirming their views.

2. Mortimer reads from an old manuscript. A maiden is abducted by Hugo Baskerville, escapes, and is pursued by his hounds across Dartmoor. When his colleagues follow, they find Baskerville dead, with a huge beast tearing at his throat. His descendent Sir Charles Baskerville has been found dead at Baskerville Hall from causes unknown, and a next of kin is sought to take over the estate. Mortimer adds that Sir Charles was in good health and he saw the footprints of a gigantic hound on inspecting the body.

3. Mortimer believes in a supernatural explanation, but as executor of Sir Charles’ will he needs advice on the new incumbent Sir Henry Baskerville. Watson and Holmes compare notes on clues offered by the garden where Sir Charles was found.

4. Henry Baskerville arrives next morning with a warning note he has received at his hotel. Holmes analyses its text cut out from a copy of The Times. Henry Baskerville also has one of his boots stolen from the hotel. Holmes and Watson discover someone following Baskerville, then they send a messenger in search of Times cuttings in nearby hotels.

5. Henry Baskerville loses another shoe at the hotel. Dr Mortimer reveals the identity of those who have profited from Sir Charles’ will – including himself. The total value of estate is close to one million pounds. A boot suddenly reappears. Holmes interviews the cab driver whose bearded ‘spy’ claimed he was ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

6. Baskerville, Mortimer, and Watson travel to Dartmoor, where a convict has escaped from the prison. They arrive at the dark and gloomy Baskerville Hall., where the butler Mr Barrymore and his wife wish to leave following the death of Sir Charles. Watson hears a woman sobbing late at night.

7. Watson is somewhat suspicious of Barrymore. He meets the naturalist Stapleton who already knows all about Watson and Holmes. Stapleton points out the treacherous Grimpen Mire, which swallows up a Dartmoor pony. They hear a terrible sound which he claims is the Baskerville hound. Watson meets Stapleton’s sister Beryl, who warns him to go back to London immediately, but then retracts her warning.

8. Watson reports to Holmes by letter that young Sir Harry has taken a fancy to Beryl Stapleton, and that Mr Frankland is a litigious neighbour. Watson spots Barrymore making suspicious movements in the house at night.

9. Watson and Sir Harry decide to spy on Barrymore. Watson also observes a meeting of Sir Harry with Beryl which is thwarted by Stapleton who disapproves of the relationship. However, he later apologises and asks Harry to wait for three months in his romantic endeavours. Watson and Harry catch Barrymore making a signal at the window. Mrs Barrymore explains that it is to her brother, the escaped convict. They go out to catch him, hear the hound, and see a tall figure on a Tor. The convict escapes capture.

10. Sir Harry agrees with Barrymore not to pursue the convict Selden, who plans to leave the country. Barrymore reveals that Sir Charles was due to meet a woman on the night of his death. Watson learns that this could be Mrs Laura Lyons, Frankland’s daughter. Barrymore reveals that there is another man on the Moor.

11. Watson interrogates Mrs Laura Lyons, who reluctantly tells him about her movements and explains that she is in an unhappy marriage. Later her father Falkland boasts of his successful law suits and reveals that he has seen a boy delivering food to the convict. Watson finds the hut on the moor where the man on the Tor is hiding – and he turns out to be Sherlock Holmes.

12. Holmes reveals that Beryl is not Stapleton’s sister but his wife. There is a cry of horror, and they find the dead body of Sir Henry at the bottom of a cliff. But it turns out to be the convict Selden, who has been given Henry’s old clothes in which to escape. Stapleton appears, claiming he was disturbed by the cries.

13. Holmes spots that one of the Baskerville family portraits looks like Stapleton. They pretend to go to London but interview Laura Lyons, revealing that Stapleton is married. She is outraged, and reveals the details of her letter to Sir Charles. Lestrade arrives from London, summoned by Holmes.

14. Watson, Holmes, and Lestrade stake out Stapleton’s house whilst Sir Henry is there for dinner. Their plans are threatened when a fog begins to descend. Sir Henry leaves after dinner, and Stapleton unleashes the hound on him. Holmes shoots the hound dead. They then find Beryl Stapleton bound and gagged in an upstairs room of the house. Next day they go in search of Stapleton on the Mire, but do not find him.

15. Some time later Holmes outlines the background details to the case. Stapleton was the son of a rogue Baskerville. He married Beryl (a Costa Rican) stole money, and changed his name to Vandeleur. He opened a school in Yorkshire, and when it collapsed moved to Devon. Only two people stood between him and the inheritance. Posing as a single man he paid court to Laura Lyons. After frightening Sir Charles to death with the Hound, he tried to kill Sir Henry but his plans were exposed by Holmes.

1939 film adaptation

The Hound of the Baskervilles – characters

Sherlock Holmes	an amateur consultant detective
Dr John Watson	Holmes’ friend, a retired army surgeon
Sir Charles Baskerville	the aged and infirm owner of the Baskerville estate
Henry Baskerville	the legitimate heir to the title (from Canada)
Jack Stapleton	a Baskerville, alias Vandeleur, alias Stapleton, a naturalist
Beryl Stapleton	his attractive wife, masquerading as his sister
John Barrymore	the butler at Baskerville Hall
James Mortimer	a country doctor
Mr Frankland	a litiigious neighbour at the Hall
Mrs Laura Lyons	Frankland’s unhappily married daughter
Selden	an escaped convict

The Hound of the Baskervilles – further reading

Biography

John Dickson Carr, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London: John Murray, 1949.

Michael Coren, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London: Bloomsbury, 1995.

John L/ Lellenberg, The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Andrew Lycett, Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008.

Pierre Nordon, Conan Doyle: A Biography, London: John Murray, 1966.

Hesketh Pearson, Conan Doyle – His Life and Work, London: Methuen, 1943.

Julian Symons, Portrait of an Artist: Conan Doyle, London: Whizzard Press, 1979.

Criticism

Don Richard Cox, Arthur Conan Doyle, New York: Ungar, 1985.

Owen Dudley Edwards, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1983.

Trevor Hall, Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies, London: Duckworth, 1969.

Michael and Mollie Hardwick, The Sherlock Holmes Companion, London: John Murray, 1962.

Howard Haycraft, The Art of the Mystery Story, Caroll & Graf Publishers, 1983.

Harold Orel (ed), Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Hall & Co, 1992.

Julian Symons, Bloody Murder, London: Faber, 1972.

Robin Winks, The Historian as Detective, London: Harper Collins, 1969.

Jaqueline A. Yaffe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Boston: Twayne, 1967.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – web links

Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia
Comprehensive biographical notes on the detective, extracted from all the stories and novels.

The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
An active literary and social society with special events, a journal, meetings, newsletter, and shop.

Discovering Sherlock Holmes
Repository at Stanford University – includes facsimile reproductions of stories from the original Strand Magazine

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The Sherlock Holmes Formula

July 20, 2018 by Roy Johnson

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a total of fifty-nine Sherlock Holmes stories – most of which appeared in The Strand Magazine between 1887 and 1927. The stories made Doyle rich and brought thousands of readers to the magazine. Sherlock Holmes became so popular as a character that Doyle thought the stories were interfering with what he regarded as his more serious literary ambitions. In 1893 he killed off his hero in a famous story The Final Problem where Holmes is pulled to his death by arch rival Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.

This created such an outcry and a public demand for more stories (particularly in the United States) that Doyle was forced to ‘resurrect’ Holmes. He did this rather cleverly by creating new stories that dealt with cases from a time before his demise.

Origins

It is quite clear that the character of Sherlock Holmes is based largely on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous detective Auguste Dupin. Holmes leads a largely solitary and slightly bohemian life; he operates as a private detective; and he solves his cases not by action but by a process which combines acute observation of details with a rigorous system of logical induction. All of these characteristics are identical to those of Auguste Dupin.

Structure

A typical story is related by his friend Doctor Watson as a first person narrator. A retired medical orderly from the war in Afghanistan, Watson takes up bachelor residence with Holmes at the famous apartments 221B Baker Street. Later in the series, he marries and lives separately. Sometimes Watson merely acts as an ‘outer narrator’. He introduces the story, then relates Holmes’ account of the mystery and its solution. In just one or two stories Sherlock Holmes himself is the first person narrator (The Lion’s Man and The Blanched Soldier).

Watson often presents a brief character sketch of Holmes – his moodiness, his habits of playing the violin or taking cocaine, and his obsessive recording of previous cases. Then there might follow an example of his inductive method. Holmes for instance more than once presents a perceptive interpretation of Watson’s recent behaviour from a close examination of his shoes.

Then comes the announcement of the mystery to be solved – often accompanied by the arrival of the person who has commissioned the case. The client suddenly appears at 221B Baker Street with a problem which is either a personal and sensitive issue, or one which cannot be solved by the police.

Sherlock Holmes is in fact an amateur consultant detective. He solves problems which might be crimes that have baffled the police, but he also acts in cases which are puzzling to individuals – and sometimes in which no crime has been committed.

His first step in almost all cases is to assemble the details of the case. The reader is thereby presented with the ‘background’ to the problem. This includes baffling circumstances, the skullduggery, or the crime itself – all outlined within the confines of Holmes’ Baker Street consulting rooms.

Holmes then constructs a solution to the problem – but does not say what it is. Proof of his theory is usually required, and this usually involves a trip to either Paddington, Euston, or Victoria railway station. On the journey to their destination he unravels some of the further details to Watson, who is amazed at Holmes’ insights.

Arriving at their destination, (the crime scene or the locus of the problem) Holmes often arranges a fiendish plot or dons some convincing disguise which causes the culprit to reveal him or herself.

It has to be said that in this latter phase of the story, there is often a great deal more background detail provided to explain the origins of the problem or to solve the crime. This is often detail the reader can have no way of knowing from what has been previously dramatised in the story.

It is in this sense that despite their enduring popularity, the Sherlock Holmes stories are pitched at what might be called the tabloid level of literary distinction. They are lightweight, often dryly amusing, and quite entertaining tales. They have even attracted a considerable amount of critical attention – though this is often taken up with naive issues of correspondence between the fictional events of the stories and the ‘real’ London and South-East in which they are situated. (For example – Where exactly is 221B Baker Street?)

But Conan Doyle does not really play fair with his readers. Sherlock Holmes might be a memorable fictional creation; he might have impressive powers of induction; and he might get caught up in thrilling escapades in his work as a consultant detective. But if the solution to the problems he faces comes from a character who suddenly appears in the last pages of a story, the revelation of a hidden trapdoor, or the unannounced arrival of an illegitimate child – then the patient reader has every reason to feel somewhat cheated rather than rewarded.

The best current editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories are those published in the Oxford World’s Classics paperback series. Each volume contains a critical introduction, a note on the text, a bibliography of further reading, a chronology of Arthur Conan Doyle, and most importantly a series of explanatory notes giving historical, geographical, and scientific information about details mentioned in the text.

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

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