Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg
Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft
PS II: The League of extraordinary Gentlemen Reading Late-Nineteenth Century Novels
Dozentin: Dr. Anja Müller
Handout: Kristina Sauer
SS 2006
Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes Stories
The life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
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Born 1859 to an Irish family that had settled in Edinburgh
Came from a good Catholic family
Attended at Hodder and Stonyhurst (= catholic counterpart of English Eton)
Enjoyed a year at an Austrian school and on his return, he was entered as a medical
student at Edinburgh University (where one of the Professors, Dr. Joseph Bell, later
became the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes)
Began a medical practice in Portsmouth  plenty of time to write because of the
paucity of patients
1885: married Louis Hawkins; 2 children: Mary, Kingsley ; Louis developed
tuberculosis and died in 1906
Doyle opened an own surgery but there were only few patients  gave up the medical
practice because he had become very successful as a writer
1887: Sherlock Holmes appeared for the first time in “A Study in Scarlet”
1889: wrote his first historical novel  had great success  Doyle thought he had
found his metier
Went to South Africa during the Boer War ; then he published The Cause and
Conduct of the War in South Africa  1902: became Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because
of this ( and not for the creation of Sherlock Holmes as most people think)
1907: married Jean Leckie; 3 children: Denis, Adrian, Jean
After the death of his son, he became fascinated with spiritual theory  after WW I
only occasional fiction
1930: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in Crowborough (Sussex)
Important Works:
Sherlock Holmes:
 A Study in Scarlet (1887)
 The Sign of the Four (1890)
 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891)
 The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
 The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
 The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
 The Valley of Fear (1914)
 His Last Bow (1917)
 The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)
Professor Challenger:
 The Lost World (1912)
 The Poison Belt (1913)
 The Land of Mist (1926)
 When the World Screamed (1928)
 The Disintegration Machine (1929)
Others:
 The Mystery of Sasassa Valley (1879)
 The Captain of the Polestar (1884)
 The Mystery of Cloomber (1888)
 Micah Clarke(1889)
 The Firm of Girdlestone (1890)
 The White Company (1891)
 The Parasite (1894)
 Rodney Stone (1896)
 The Great Boer War (1900)
 The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct (1902)
 Sir Nigel (1906)
 The History of Spiritualism (1926)
“The final problem”
main characters:
 Sherlock Holmes: Gentleman of a good family, a university man and an arrogant
intellectual; regards the official police as plodding at best and inept at worst
 Dr. Watson: the helpmate of Sherlock Holmes, narrator of the stories
 Professor Moriarty: the master-evil as an antagonist to the detective; Holmes called
him “the Napoleon of crime, the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is
undetected in this great city (=London)”; is of good birth and excellent education; he
is presumed to have been killed in his fight with Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach
Falls near Meiringen in Switzerland
“The empty house”
main characters:
 Sherlock Holmes
 Dr. Watson
 Colonel Sebastian Moran: Holmes calls him “the second dangerous man in London”
because he is the helpmate of Professor Moriarty, who died in “The final Problem”;
wants to have his revenge and so he tries to kill Sherlock Holmes, but is convicted by
him before he can do it; he is of good education; member in the Bagatelle Card Club,
where the Honourable Ronald Adair, his victim, is a member, too
 The Honourable Ronald Adair: second son of the Earl of Maynooth. Is a member in
the Bagatelle Card Club like Colonel Moran; shot through the head in his locked room
at his home, with a soft-nosed revolver bullet, fired from a specially adapted airgun;
the murderer was Colonel Sebastian Moran
 Mycroft Holmes: brother of Sherlock Holmes and the only one who knew that he was
still alive
 Mrs. Hudson: the housemaid; looks after the House in Baker Street; was angry with
Holmes because he didn’t tell her that he is still alive
The distribution of roles in Sherlock Holmes:
Arthur Conan Doyle imagines himself to be Dr. Watson and his Professor at the Edinburgh
University, Dr. Joseph Bell, got the characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.
The person of Sherlock Holmes:
Arthur Conan Doyle combined the characteristics of two great detectives in Sherlock Holmes:
Lecoq (detective created by Émile Gaboriau) and Dupin (detective created by Edgar Allan
Poe). On the one hand he is a highly talented, subtle logician and on the other hand he is an
energetic undefatigable hunter for the initiator of crime, even if this second characteristic does
not surface as in Lecoq’s adventures.
Holmes is a very well-educated person, who has a lot of knowledge, especially in scientific
subjects and in medicine; but he knows only the subjects that are necessary for his cases. He
also has a great memory in order to solve his cases. So he observes the suspicious persons
first;he owns many gadgets, e.g. pistols, lock picks, pincers.. Holmes is very discrete when
solving a problem and so he is often confronted with the cases, his clients do not want to tell
the police.
The detection techniques of Sherlock Holmes:
The detection techniques, which Doyle used in his novels were not known in his time,
especially the scientific methods.
The techniques of Sherlock Holmes set the pattern for that combination of armchair deduction
and active pursuit of dues that characterises all of his subsequent work. He examines
elaborate patterns of footsteps, identifies cigar ash and in the end engages in the detailed stepby-step summary of his methods that has become indispensable to the mystery format.
Like all other arts, the science of deduction and analysis is one which can only be acquired by
long and patient study. It sharpens the faculties of observation and teaches one where to look
and what to look for. By a man’s finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boot, by his trouserknees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs – by
each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed.
The skilled workman is very careful indeed what he takes into his brain. He will have nothing
but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment
and all in the most perfect order. Moreover it is of the highest importance, therefore, not to
have useless facts in the brain which hamper the useful ones.
Furthermore, the detective is able to solve a problem by an accurate and systematic
examination of all that came in his way and consequently he should always approach a case
with an absolutely blank mind to put the events that happened carefully together. It is also
important to know how to trace footsteps and how to talk to a suspicious person in an
investigation. Therefore, the detective should never let them know that their information can
be of the slightest importance to him because if he does so, the person would immediately
stop talking about this issue.
Moreover it is very important to know things better than someone else and that the detective
trains himself to see what others oversee. Consequently, in an investigation, the little things
are infinitely the most important ones; therefore the investigator has to concentrate himself
upon details.
Furthermore, the eyes of the detective should be trained to examine faces. It is the first quality
of a criminal investigation that you should see through a disguise.
Holmes himself says: “I now proceeded, using my familiar ,method of logical analysis, to
narrow down the possible solutions” ("The adventure of the Blanched Soldier")
The person of Watson:
Watson is a very good friend of Sherlock Holmes and his helpmate. He likes adventures very
much and he is often necessary for Holmes to solve a problem. But Sherlock often criticises
Watson for drawing hasty conclusions and so the reader sometimes gets the impression that
he thinks himself superior to Watson.
Watson is a fictive person who is the constant companion of Holmes. Moreover he is the
story-teller of their adventures with which he wants to show the special capabilities of his
master. He writes from a first person point of view and therefore influences the reader’s
perception of the text. Consequently, he has a limited point of view and so the reader has to
recognise that he cannot always trust his narratives.
The Tension in detective novels:
There are two types of tension: (1) the inner tension, i.e. a tension of feelings and (2)
intellectual tension , which basically affects the mind. Whereas (1) makes the reader feel
involved in the action, (2) makes the reader curious about the development and the ending of
a story.
The main technique to create tension is to use a secret about the discourse of the story that is
unknown to the reader. But there must also be conspiracies which disappoint the expectations
of the reader and create changes in the plot. The more important technique is the secret
because it maintains the reader's wish to be informed. Through these techniques, tension can
be increased individually.
Arthur Conan Doyle creates a lot of tension in his Sherlock Holmes Stories to make the reader
feel involved in the plot and also to make him think about the person who committed the
murder.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualism and Detective Fiction
The classic detective fiction is a literature of logic in which everything has a scientific
explanation. It is concerned with hard facts and encourages scepticism. The reader must learn
to doubt everything he or she is told about events and characters and must automatically
disbelieve such things as alibis. Spiritualism, on the other hand, involves suspension of logical
faculties to believe in events and phenomena which can’t be explained in scientific or logical
terms. The mediums role can be seen as being similar to that of a detective in a murder case.
Both are trying to make the dead speak in order to reveal the truth. The ability to make the
dead communicate in a more reliable way would no doubt be a great advantage for a
detective. So the best known link between spiritualism and detective fiction is Arthur Conan
Doyle. As a young man he has described spiritualism as nonsense, but in later years he
became one of its staunchest advocates; many books say that there’s a connection between the
death of Doyle’s son in WW I and his sudden believe in spiritualism. Perhaps the best
example to show his interest in the supernatural, is the ghost story “The Brown Hand”(1899),
which is narrated by a doctor who is also a member of the Society for Physical Research. So a
surgeon is haunted by a ghost of a man whose hand he had amputated. The ghost keeps
returning to look for the missing parts of his body.
But Doyle kept spiritualism out of the Holmes stories because he wanted to point out the
capabilities of his detective and not of a medium.
Bibliography:
 Depken, Friedrich. Sherlock Holmes, Raffles und ihre Vorbilder: Ein Beitrag zur
Entwicklungsgeschichte und Technik der Kriminalerzählung. Heidelberg: Winter, 1914.
 Edwards, Owen Dudley. The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
 Hardwick, Michael and Mollie Hardwick. The Sherlock Holmes Companion.
Twickenham: Senate, 1999.
 Peterson, Audrey. Victorian Masters of Mystery: From Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle.
New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984.
 Tracy, Jack. The encyclopaedia Sherlockiana: A universal dictionary of the state of
knowledge of Sherlock Homes and his biographer John H. Watson, M. D. London: New
English Library, 1978.
 Warren, Chernaik and Martin Swales and Robert Vilain. The Art of Detective Fiction.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.