Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skilful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning (though in reality, he uses abductive reasoning) and forensic skills to solve difficult cases.
Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that feature Holmes. The first story, A Study in Scarlet , appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887 and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, respectively. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialised novels appeared until 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1875 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914.
All but four stories are narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, two are narrated by Holmes himself and two others are written in the third person. In two stories ("The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott"), Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, whereas Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story.
Conan Doyle said that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.
Biography
Early life
Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes' life outside of the adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories; nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families do construct a loose biographical picture of the detective.
An estimate of Holmes' age in the story "His Last Bow" places his birth around 1854; commonly, the date is cited as 6 January. However, on her website, Laurie R. King gives an argument for a younger Holmes, with a birth date somewhere between 1863 and 1868.
Holmes states that he first developed his deduction methods while an undergraduate. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that, given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes’ position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there". His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students. According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take up detection as a profession and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.
From 1881, Holmes is described as having lodgings at 221B Baker Street, London, from where he runs his private detective agency. 221B is a flat up seventeen steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the "upper end" of the road. Until the arrival of Dr. Watson, Holmes works alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass, including a host of informants and a group of street children he calls the Baker Street Irregulars. The Irregulars appear in three stories, "The Sign of the Four", "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".
Little is said of Holmes' family. His parents are unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great-uncle was Vernet, the French artist. He has an older brother, Mycroft, a government official, who appears in three stories; he is mentioned in a number of others. Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction. However, he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London."
It's unclear whether Holmes has any other siblings. In "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Holmes says, "I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for", leading some to suppose the existence of same. But he mentions this only to warn a woman in a case, taking her as his sister; therefore, this may be a mere figure of speech.
Life with Dr Watson
Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death; his residence is maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.
Watson has two roles in Holmes' life. First, he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. Second, he is Holmes' chronicler (his "Boswell" as Holmes refers to him). Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. Holmes is often described as criticising Watson's writings as sensational and populist, suggesting that they neglect to accurately and objectively report the pure calculating "science" of his craft.
Nevertheless, Holmes' friendship with Watson is undoubtedly his most significant relationship. In several stories, Holmes' fondness for Watson—often hidden beneath his cold, intellectual exterior—is revealed. In "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded in a confrontation with a villain; while the bullet wound proves to be "quite superficial," Watson is moved by Holmes' reaction:
It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.In all, Holmes is described as being in active practice for twenty-three years, with Watson documenting his cases for seventeen of them.
Retirement
Holmes retires to a bee farm on the Sussex Downs in 1903-04, where he takes up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen." Only one adventure, narrated by Holmes himself pursuing the case as an amateur, takes place during the detective's retirement.
Habits and personality
Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In an early story, Watson describes Holmes as:
The worst tenant in London... keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece... He had a horror of destroying documents...Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout the stories, Holmes would dive into his apparent mess of random papers and artifacts, only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.
In matters of personal hygiene, by contrast, Holmes is described in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his intensely practical pursuit of his profession, however; in the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet", his hands are discoloured with acid stains, while later Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct chemical experiments.
Watson frequently makes note of Holmes' erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" where, according to Watson:
had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.His chronicler does not consider Holmes' habitual use of a pipe, or his less-frequent use of cigarettes and cigars, a vice. Nor, does Watson condemn Holmes' willingness to bend the truth or break the law on behalf of a client (e.g., lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses) where he
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