The Case of Sherlock Holmes
Secrets and Lies in Conan Doyle's Detective Fiction
The Case of Sherlock Holmes uncovers what is untold, partly told, wrongly told, or deliberately concealed in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes saga. This engaging study uses a scholarly approach, combining close reading with historicism, to read the stories afresh, sceptically probing Dr Watson’s narratives and Holmes’s often barely credible solutions. Drawing on Victorian and Edwardian history, Conan Doyle’s life and works, and Doyle’s literary sources, the book offers new insights into the Holmes stories and reveals what they say about money, class, family, sex, race, war, and secrecy.
Key Features- New insights into the ever-popular Holmes stories
- New contexts for late-Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction, from forgotten scandals to the social controversies of the age
- A literary-critical approach to these popular works that is both scholarly and accessible
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Texts and References
Introduction: The Art of Deduction
Part One: Finance
1. Stone into Money
2. The Roylotts of Stoke Moran
3. The Guardians of Securities
Part Two: Class
4. The Pick of a Bad Lot
5. The Fall of the House of Musgrave
6. A Scandal in East Yorkshire
Part Three: Family
7. Singular Occurrence at a Wedding
8. The Rock of Gibraltar
9. The Discreetly Shadowed Corners
Part Four: Sex
10. The Worst Man in London
11. The Whole Queer Business of Wisteria Lodge
Part Five: Race
12. Nice, Amiable People!
13. A Nobler Man Never Walked the Earth
14. The Heat of the Amazon Was Always in her Blood
Part Six: War
15. This Circle of Misery and Violence and Fear
16. Do We Progress?
17. The East Wind
Part Seven: Secrecy
18. That Secret History of a Nation
19. Oaths and Secrets
20. The Giant Rat of Sumatra
Conclusion: The Problem of Finality
Bibliography
Index
Erudite and enjoyable, Andrew Glazzard’s book replaces the Sherlock Holmes stories in a contemporary context of small social details and large cultural and economic forces. If you thought you knew the Holmes stories, think again: this study detects a hoard of secret treasure in them, enriching our reading and leaving us with an even greater respect for their importance.
In The Case of Sherlock Holmes: Secrets and Lies in Conan Doyle’s Detective Fiction, Glazzard revisits the “unnoticed” little things that run throughout the canon, hoping to revise our appreciation of how profoundly these stories are engaged with the social and political challenges of their time.
A scholarly work, but also an accessible one for anyone with even a passing interest in the character, its author or the time in which the stories were set. Glazzard manages to delve deep into the psyche of Conan Doyle and of Holmes.
[...]a fascinating, thought-provoking, and highly enjoyable read. The book should be required reading for students taking courses in crime fiction or late nineteenth-century culture: it is an invaluable corrective of the tendency to generalize about social developments of the time. But The Case of Sherlock Holmes will also attract a wide readership of Holmes enthusiasts and scholars of early genre fiction alike, all of whom are likely to encouter new insights into the historical world of the stories.
The book should be required reading for students taking courses in crime fiction or late nineteenth-century culture: it is an invaluable corrective of the tendency to generalize about social developments of the time. But The Case of Sherlock Holmes will also attract a wide readership of Holmes enthusiasts and scholars of early genre fiction alike, all of whom are likely to encounter new insights into the historical world of the stories.
