Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Illustrated Short Stories

Shortly thereafter, I purchased what purported to be the 'only complete Sherlock Holmes available', compiled by Christopher Morley. This became my favourite book. However, I have continued to collect editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and this is one of those collections. It does contain all the short stories, together with the illustrations from the Strand Magazine, which perhaps had as much to do with the way we view Holmes and Watson as does the text of the stories itself. It does not have illustrations or other commentary, and the print (in a double-column format) is rather small, but it is nonetheless a useful text for those who don't want to have a heavier book in their hands.

The original stories, which appeared in The Strand magazine, were illustrated, by the great illustrator Sidney Paget.

From the beginning introduction of Holmes and Watson to Holmes' gentle retirement to beekeepping on the southern coast of England, this book contains all the essential stories (none of the apocryphal, anecdotal, or tribute-written pieces are contained here). Holmes was often thought to be a real person, and Sherlockians the world over still search for 'evidence' to prove that he was. During his 'lifetime', the post office for the Baker Street area regularly received mail addressed to Holmes or Watson at 221B Baker Street. While such an address does not (and did not during the late Victorian era) exist, there is a business on the site that would be 221B, and they have dedicated a desk to Holmes, and strive to answer mail received in the great detective's name.

Perhaps the two elements that made Holmes and Watson the world-renowned figures that they became are, first, the dominance of the British Empire globally at the time Conan Doyle was writing, which made English things sought-after, admired, and to be emulated, and secondly, the introduction of a method of detection hitherto unknown, both in the annals of detective stories (save perhaps in a proto-form in Poe and a few other obscure pieces of dubious literary merit) and in real life.

Holmesian tales became required reading in the training of police and detectives in many parts of the world. It is still recommended even when it is not required.

Holmes permeates other literature and venues as well. When Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation looks for images of Holmes, he is being guided by the descriptions in the stories as well as by the illustrations in The Strand. When the BBC produced Jeremy Brett's rendering of Holmes, the same holds true. When Basil Rathbone's films were cast, these illustrations and stories were uppermost in the directors' minds.

So, pull some tobacco from your persian slipper, stoke your pipe, scratch out a tune on your violin, and re-enter the gas-lit world of the foggy London, where danger is afoot and one detective can always save the day.


Get down into the unseen depths of English society   October 5, 2003
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Conan Doyle is a genius. When he invented his famous detective Sherlock Holmes he found a gold mine for publication in the press in England from 1891 to 1927, and of course for book publication later on.
The second element we have to put forward is the strange taste the English public has had for a long time for detective stories. After Conan Doyle Agatha Christie will come and many others. The English are attracted by the delinquent side of social life, by these shady characters who are taking advantage of their neighbors to make an illegal and immoral living, though at times we may wonder if it is really immoral, if those who have all the riches they have, by birth most of the time, are not even more immoral than the crooks who are taking advantage of them. In a way these stories, and the English interest for these fringes of social life, show that a sort of bad conscience goes along with it and they want to explore it.
These stories show that criminals are not crazy people but are very rational people who use their brains to find some loopholes in the system that they can exploit to their own benefit. Most of these stories are depicting very clever criminals who really transform crime into some profitable industry. And they also know about modern technology and use the knowledge they can find in science to improve their productivity and their profit. In the stories we can see modern inventions coming into the picture little by little, such as the telegraph, telegrams and the telephone.
These stories also show that the detective who will be able to stop these criminals will have to use a very sophisticated way of thinking, trying to get the knowledge that criminals need to commit their crimes even before them. It also shows, from beginning to end, that the society Conan Doyle is speaking of is the society of the train in which other means of transportation are secondary, except horse-drawn carriages of any type within the narrow limits of London downtown area. Beyond, Sherlock Holmes uses the train, be it the Metropolitan train or railways going outside.
These stories eventually enable us to draw the main trait of Sherlock Holmes’s personality and way of thinking : to use any kind of knowledge he may have accumulated in his mind, to feed his mind with new knowledge all the time, and to always look at a case from an intuitive point of view that tries to build up various alternative hypotheses among which he will eventually choose when time comes and new facts appear. This is an essential mental stand : never reduce yourself to one solution and never close your mind to alternative explanations, no matter how farfetched, provided they fit with the facts you know. Then you just have to look for the missing elements that can fill the holes in your various hypotheses.
The final element I would like to put forward is that Conan Doyle is definitely of his time : the characters represent the ideas of his time and there is practically no romanticism about these criminals. Some may even reflect very dark sides of the ideology of the period. One example : the heavy antisemitism of the criminal in the very last story, published in 1927, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, shows how this man is warped by his financial interest, but also how the justice of the land will take a lenient attitude in front of his crime which is not killing anyone or stealing anything, but just cheating with circumstances to evade the Jews who are holding him in their hands because of his debts. Is this justice excusing the unpleasant things he does because by doing so he is able to evade, temporarily, these Jews ? One may think so.
Conan Doyle in other words is able to show the sad and sorry sides of his society, without ever leaning towards any ideology that may ask for this society to be changed : he even goes as far as condemning such attempts, or rather those who represent such attempts, like the Nihilists he deals with in one story at least (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez).

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU