(Sherlock Holmes experimenting with bondage, by Frederick Dorr-Steele, 1904)
When I was younger I was an obsessive Sherlock Holmes fan.
I was twelve and I’d been given a book token and, fresh from the triumph of having read Watership Down, I decided to buy the biggest, thickest book I could, and read it all. The biggest book in the shop was The Complete Sherlock Holmes. So I bought that.
People talk about books that changed your life? This was mine. I read that whole thing through–the 56 short stories and four novels that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his famous consulting detective.
I fell in love with several things. The classic mystery story structure was one of them. I was a structure-aholic even then, and the Holmes stories are perfectly put together, even when there are flaws in the story.
I fell in love with Victorian England, and most particularly London. This was one of the many reasons why I eventually moved to England. When I first visited London, aged 16, I went straight to the Sherlock Holmes pub in Charing Cross, and stood enraptured in the recreation of Holmes’s study they used to have upstairs. I pointed things out to the other visitors and recited trivia.
I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes. This was a little bit weird, because Holmes was pretty much asexual and certainly much older than I was. But the attraction to competence, confidence, deserved arrogance, and extreme intelligence has stuck with me, and I think many of my heroes have those qualities. I think the biggest one though is remarkable perception. If Holmes could deduce all those facts about somebody from their glove, what could he see about me? My heroes and heroines all have a little bit of that intensity of perception, at least some of the time, about each other.
(Sherlock Holmes heats it up in the bedroom, by Sidney Paget)
But the real thing that got me about Sherlock Holmes was the fact that there was a community of fans across the globe, some of whom had written books analysing the stories. Although this wasn’t “proper” literary criticism, it was the first hint I ever had that you could look deeper than the surface of a text and find hidden secrets.
And that was one of the most important things I’ve ever learned.
I wrote about Sherlock Holmes for my entrance essay for Brown University, and I’m sure that’s what got me in. When I got to Brown, I joined a Sherlockian society, the Cornish Horrors of Rhode Island–a genial group of (at that time) older men who were all utterly charming to the sole teenage girl in their midst. Eventually, the purchase of my first Sherlock Holmes book led me to a research degree in Victorian literature, and to a life in England.
I teach Sherlock Holmes stories at school. When I was at home this Christmas I picked up my Annotated Sherlock Holmes and read a few stories, and realised I’d forgotten a huge amount about Sherlock Holmes. But one thing that I remember is that an eminent Sherlockian, Christopher Morley, had determined that Holmes’s birthday was the 6th of January.
Happy birthday, Mr Holmes.
Is that the “old” Annotated Sherlock Holmes put together by wossname Baring-Gould, or the new one edited by Leslie Klinger? We have the Baring-Gould, and are trying to decide whether we can justify two annotated Sherlock Holmeses in the one house. We probably will bow to the inevitable at some point and get the Klinger.
It’s the William S. Baring-Gould one. Two volumes, weighs a ton. A book too big to read in bed unless you have a reading partner.
Have you read Julian Barnes’ “Arthur & George”, Julie? I bought it for the dh for his stocking this year and he couldn’t put it down.
It’s by my bed, Liz. My husband read it and loved it.
I remember reading somewhere that ACD absolutely LOATHED his Holmes stories, and thought that his other fiction would be much more likely to stand the test of time.
(There’s another part of my brain saying that ACD wrote historical romances. Ones which are completely unread now. But that might be hallucination from lack of chocolate.)
I think the ‘wow’ book for me was Wuthering Heights. (I was precocious.) Also the short stories of HG Wells. And Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Was also a huge Watership Downs fan.
I don’t think there was a specific book, rather several of them, that changed my life. But the stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes were definitely among my favorites!
This is a beautiful blog post, Julie.
I remember when I was a kid, we’d sometimes go to visit some family friends. They were retired, and the conversation was very ‘grown-up’, and when it became too much so, I’d retreat to their neat little study and sneak their copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes into an armchair with me.
LOVE your picture captions, btw. LOL!
Yes, Doyle wasn’t all that happy with being known as a famous author of genre fiction. I think there are worse things.
When I first read Wuthering Heights I HATED it, Kate. It was another revelation for me to realise, later, that hating a book is as valuable as loving it, because the author’s created that passion in the reader. I love it now–not because of the characters, who I still personally dislike, but because of the artistry of it.
Yes, Sherlock Holmes is a comfort read, Anna. Definitely.
[...] 1. One book that changed my life: A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin. It made me want to create worlds. I’ve also already blogged about how Sherlock Holmes changed my life. 2. One book I have read more than once: I’ll confess: I have to read everything more than once because I read so quickly that I often forget details soon after I’ve finished reading. I think I’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird nearly every year since I was twelve or so. Maybe I could name my son Atticus. 3. One book I would want on a desert island: Hamlet, or Middlemarch. Both of them are so rich that I could spend years imagining the implications of a phrase, or thinking about the characters. 4. One book that made me laugh: I Only Have Fangs for You, by Kathy Love. God, I love her hero Sebastian. It’s out in December! (I got to read it early because I’m her critique partner, heh heh heh.) 5. One book that made me cry: Two days ago, trying to understand the feelings of a friend, I read the chapter on bereavement in the pregnancy book What to Expect When You’re Expecting. 6. One book I wish I’d written: Great Expectations. The best example of a sympathetic, flawed hero I have ever read and a masterful use of point of view. 7. One book I wish had never been written: I was ruthlessly tortured by Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady when I was an adolescent. I’m very sorry that Jude the Obscure made Thomas Hardy decide to stop writing novels, but I suspect he was looking for an excuse anyway. 8. One book I am currently reading: Peoplewatching by Desmond Morris. 9. One book I have been meaning to read: Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me is sitting by my bed, and I haven’t picked it up yet, because I know when I do, I’ll do nothing else but read it. For a similar reason, I’ve avoided buying Marion Keyes’ Anybody Out There?. Posted by Julie @ 1:31 pm | Uncategorized « contest winner! [...]
[...] with spikes, after not having slept for a week and consumed a briefcase full of cocaine. I’m Sherlock Holmes, woman! Leave a [...]
I’m what you would call a late blooming Holmesian. He’s sort of crept up on me stealthily over the last few years [probably wearing a black silk mask and rubber soled shoes] and completely embedded himself in my consciousness. The Granada series, with the glorious and much missed Jeremy Brett, was my primary initiation, but my passion for the Great Detective has spread out from there to embrace anything at all Sherlock, and of course, at a woefully advanced age, reading the canon itself.
Now, in a relatively short time, my Holmes mania has grown to the extent that I have *both* the Baring-Gould and the Klinger Complete Annotateds, as well as Completes on three different ereaders! LOL
So yes indeed, Happy Birthday Mr. Holmes!