There is one fascinating exception however. He never wanted emotion to disturb his detached rationality. In the Conan Doyle canon, Holmes left the “fairer sex” to Watson. They reveal through the character of Sherlock Holmes and his companion John Watson the general evolution of recent treatments of famous fictional heroes, particularly with respect to issues of gender and sexuality.
#The adventures of sherlock holmes book characters series#
The most recent renditions have been two television series, Sherlock on BBC with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (2010-2017) and the CBS series Elementary (2012-2019) with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. If the detective faded somewhat in mid-century he was brought back to life by Jeremy Brett in the Granada television series running from 1984-1984, and then by Stephen Spielberg’s 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes. Each actor shaped an evolving image, largely consistent with the original. Various other actors, notably Basil Rathbone, were cast as Holmes in film and on television during the mid-twentieth century. Gillette continued the tall, lean and obviously cerebral presentation of Holmes. Gillette even presented Holmes in a 1916 silent film that was only rediscovered in 2014. Then the American actor William Gillette portrayed Holmes on the stage, in the famous deer-stalker hat first introduced by Paget, and his distinctive pipe. A tall, aquiline Holmes image took hold, one largely consistent with Conan Doyle’s words. In the last decade of the nineteenth century Holmes was depicted in drawings in The Strand magazine by Sidney Paget. As we shall see, there is much more attention to their inner lives. Tracing the evolution of presentations of the fictional detective reveals much about changes in how heroes have been constructed over the past one hundred years. The back and forth with Gregory was the basis for the prize-winning mystery novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Haddon 2003) and the play by the same name that opened at the National Theatre in London in 2012. Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” From The Sign of Four, “when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” From the story “Silver Blaze” in The Memoirs comes Holmes’s unforgettable exchange with Inspector Gregory: Many of Holmes sayings from those early works are still famous today. His hero returned in “The Empty House,” the first adventure in the 1905 volume The Return of Sherlock Holmes. However, Conan Doyle couldn’t keep Holmes down. That episode was called “The Final Problem.” Then in 1892 the first set of twelve short stories appeared, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.īut shortly after those were published Conan Doyle had had enough of his consulting detective and tried to kill him off in the last story of an 1894 collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The second novel, The Sign of Four, followed three years later. That mystery, and most of the subsequent ones, are told through the eyes of Holmes’ roommate and companion, Dr.
But perhaps the greatest of these nerdy heroes was Sherlock Holmes.Īrthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes in the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet. There are many examples – Columbo, Ellery Queen, and Jessica Fletcher come to mind. AllisonĬan a nerdy detective become a hero? The answer is yes.
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