The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Context

Arthur Conan Doyle began writing while studying medicine at university in the late 1870s, and had his first short story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", published in September 1879. Eight years later, A Study in Scarlet, Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story, was published by Ward Lock & Co. The novel was well received, but Doyle was paid little for it, and despite a sequel novel, The Sign of the Four, also being published by Ward Lock, he shifted his focus to short stories. In early 1891, the first editor of The Strand Magazine, Herbert Greenhough Smith, received two submissions from Doyle for the newly established magazine. He later described his reaction; "I at once realised that here was the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe." The first of these, "A Scandal in Bohemia" was published near the back of The Strand Magazine in July 1891. The stories proved popular, helping to boost the circulation of the magazine, and Doyle received 30 guineas for each short story in the initial run of twelve. These first twelve stories were published monthly from July 1891 until June 1892, and then were collected together and published as a book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on 14 October 1892 by George Newnes, the publisher of The Strand Magazine. The initial print run of the book was for 10,000 copies in the United Kingdom, and a further 4,500 copies in the United States, which were published by Harper Brothers the following day.

Summary

All of the stories within The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are told in a first-person narrative from the point of view of Dr. Watson, as is the case for all but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Doyle suggests that the short stories contained in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes tend to point out social injustices, such as "a king's betrayal of an opera singer, a stepfather's deception of his ward as a fictitious lover, an aristocratic crook's exploitation of a failing pawnbroker, a beggar's extensive estate in Kent." It suggests that, in contrast, Holmes is portrayed as offering a fresh and fair approach in an unjust world of "official incompetence and aristocratic privilege". The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains many of Doyle's favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. In 1927, he submitted a list of what he believed were his twelve best Sherlock Holmes stories to The Strand Magazine. Among those he listed were "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (as his favourite), "The Red-Headed League" (second), "A Scandal in Bohemia" (fifth) and "The Five Orange Pips" (seventh). The book was banned in the Soviet Union in 1929 because of its alleged "occultism", but the book gained popularity in a black market of similarly banned books, and the restriction was lifted in 1940.

Critical reception

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were well received upon their serialisation in The Strand Magazine. Following the publication of "A Scandal in Bohemia" in July 1891, the Hull Daily Mail described the story as being "worthy of the inventive genius" of Doyle. Just over a year later, when Doyle took a break from publishing the short stories upon the completion of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a piece in the Belfast News Letter reviewed a story by another author in The Strand Magazine saying that it "might have been read with a moderate amount of interest a year ago", but that "the unique power" of Doyle's writing was evident in the gulf in quality between the stories. The Leeds Mercury particularly praised the characterisation of Holmes, "with all his little foibles", while in contrast the Cheltenham Looker-On described Holmes as "rather a bore sometimes", noting that descriptions of his foibles "grows wearisome". The correspondent for Hampshire Telegraph lamented the fact that Doyle's more thoughtful writing, such as Micah Clarke, was not so popular as the Holmes stories, concluding that an author "who wishes to make literature pay must write what his readers want".

Adaptations

Sherlock Holmes has been adapted numerous times for both films and plays, and the character has been played by over 70 different actors in more than 200 films. A number of film and television series have borne the title "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", but some of these are either original stories, combinations of a number of Doyle's stories, or in one case, an adaptation of The Sign of the Four. Irene Adler, who is in the first short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", is prominent in many modern adaptations, despite only appearing in one story. Often in modern adaptations, she is portrayed as a love interest for Holmes, as in Robert Doherty's Elementary and the BBC's Sherlock, even though in the story itself, the narration claims: "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler." Many of the stories from the collection were included as episodes in the Granada Television series, Sherlock Holmes which ran from 1984 until 1994. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1990–1991, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. Bert Coules was the head writer, but stories were also written by Vincent McInerny and Peter Mackie, and directed by Patrick Rayner and Enyd Williams.