LIFE Sherlock Holmes: The Story Behind the World's Greatest Detective

By The Editors of LIFE

With season 4 of the popular Benedict Cumberbatch series, Sherlock, about to air on BBC One-and another Robert Downey movie about the great detective in the works-LIFE offers a colorful look back on the life and career of the immortal sleuth, along with a biography of his remarkable creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. Did you know that Holmes was based on a real person? Or that Doyle came to hate him? Or that the writer solved more than a few real-life mysteries himself? You'll find that and much more in this entertaining, immersive, informative new book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life
• Release date: Jan 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683305064

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

The True Adventures of a Fictional Detective

STUART CONWAY/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX

IN 1951, THE FESTIVAL OF Britain featured a meticulously detailed replica of Sherlock Holmes’s study, which was later installed in the upstairs dining room of the Northumberland Arms Pub near Charing Cross Station. Not surprisingly, the establishment changed its name to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, and tipplers there can now find evidence of the detective’s life and work in a space designed to look, according to a pub spokesman, as it appeared on a crisp day in the years following the great detective’s return to London in 1894.

I get many letters from all over the country about Sherlock Holmes, the detective’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once said. One letter actually contained a request for portraits of Sherlock at different periods of his life. Other fans requested autographs—from Holmes, not Doyle.

No literary character has blurred the line between reality and fiction more than Sherlock Holmes—and not just because readers continue to believe that he’s real. In the 56 stories and four novels that began with 1887’s A Study in Scarlet, Holmes became one of the first detectives (fictional or otherwise) to use chemistry, toxicology, blood stains, and ballistics to solve crimes—all of which contributed to real-life advances in criminology. In 1910, Holmes inspired a pioneer of modern forensic science, Edmond Locard, to build the world’s first crime lab—23 years after Doyle simply invented one.

In her book Mastermind, psychologist Maria Konnikova uses neuroscience and psychology to show how Holmes’s methodologies can help our brains develop. And the detective’s emphasis on simplicity can help modern doctors who feel overwhelmed by new technical information, according to the journal Medical Humanities. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital, the journal quotes Holmes. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.

But Holmes’s real-world relevance exists only because his fictional world seems so, well, real—despite its abundance of delightful absurdities. (A phony hellhound! A blowgunwielding dwarf! A priceless gem hidden in a Christmas goose!) The stories’ heady mix of rationality and gee-whizzery, of credulity and skepticism, is also reflected in the wildly disparate lives of the character and his creator. The world is big enough for us, Holmes said. No ghost need apply. But Doyle himself believed in ghosts—not to mention fairies.

In the pages that follow, you’ll find the stories of these two men: one of them real, the other realer than real—both of them immortal.

CHAPTER 1

The Birth of Sherlock Holmes

How a Struggling Doctor Created the World’s Greatest Detective

R. STONEHOUSE/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX

A FEW OF DOYLE’S PERSONAL items that were auctioned off by Christie’s in London in 2004.

I thought I would try my hand at writing a story . . . where science would take the place of romance.

—ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

1859–1886

CULTURE CLUB/GETTY

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, age six, with his artist father, Charles, in May 1865. An unstable alcoholic, Charles created some of his best artwork while institutionalized, most of it featuring elves, fairies, and the like—oddly reflecting his writer son’s belief in the existence of such beings.

On March 8, 1886, a struggling doctor and author named Arthur Conan Doyle was writing his first novel between patient visits in Portsmouth, England. Though he’d already published a clutch of undistinguished short stories, the key to literary success, he felt, lay in longer

Reviews for LIFE Sherlock Holmes

[tobinelliott · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A really quick read, but also a good summary of both the character of Sherlock Holmes and his fictional world, as well as a solid look into what drove Arthur Conan Doyle to create, and to continue long past his desire to write more Holmes stories.