The Editors of LIFE - Sherlock Holmes: The Story Behind the Worlds Greatest Detective

SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Story Behind the Worlds Greatest Detective

PBS, COURTESY PHOTOFEST

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS a modern-day Sherlock Holmes who finds himself in 1890s London on a special episode of the eponymous BBC One show.

INTRODUCTION

The True Adventures of a Fictional Detective

STUART CONWAY/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX

IN 1951, THE FESTIVAL OF Britain featured a meticulously detailed replica of Sherlock Holmess study, which was later installed in the upstairs dining room of the Northumberland Arms Pub near Charing Cross Station. Not surprisingly, the establishment changed its name to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, and tipplers there can now find evidence of the detectives life and work in a space designed to look, according to a pub spokesman, as it appeared on a crisp day in the years following the great detectives return to London in 1894.

I get many letters from all over the country about Sherlock Holmes, the detectives creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once said. One letter actually contained a request for portraits of Sherlock at different periods of his life. Other fans requested autographsfrom Holmes, not Doyle.

No literary character has blurred the line between reality and fiction more than Sherlock Holmesand not just because readers continue to believe that hes real. In the 56 stories and four novels that began with 1887s A Study in Scarlet , Holmes became one of the first detectives (fictional or otherwise) to use chemistry, toxicology, blood stains, and ballistics to solve crimesall of which contributed to real-life advances in criminology. In 1910, Holmes inspired a pioneer of modern forensic science, Edmond Locard, to build the worlds first crime lab23 years after Doyle simply invented one.

In her book Mastermind , psychologist Maria Konnikova uses neuroscience and psychology to show how Holmess methodologies can help our brains develop. And the detectives emphasis on simplicity can help modern doctors who feel overwhelmed by new technical information, according to the journal Medical Humanities. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital, the journal quotes Holmes. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.

But Holmess real-world relevance exists only because his fictional world seems so, well , real despite its abundance of delightful absurdities. (A phony hellhound! A blowgunwielding dwarf! A priceless gem hidden in a Christmas goose!) The stories heady mix of rationality and gee-whizzery, of credulity and skepticism, is also reflected in the wildly disparate lives of the character and his creator. The world is big enough for us, Holmes said. No ghost need apply. But Doyle himself believed in ghostsnot to mention fairies.

In the pages that follow, youll find the stories of these two men: one of them real, the other realer than realboth of them immortal.

EDITOR AND WRITER J.I. Baker

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Richard K. Prue (Director), Richard Shaffer (Production), Keith Aurelio, Jen Brown, Kevin Hart, Rosalie Khan, Patricia Koh, Marco Lau, Brian Mai, Rudi Papiri, Clara Renauro

SPECIAL THANKS Brad Beatson, Nicole Fisher, Melissa Frankenberry, Kristina Jutzi, Simon Keeble, Seniqua Koger, Kate Roncinske, Kristen Zwicker

Copyright 2016 Time Inc. Books

Published by LIFE BOOKS, an imprint of Time Inc. Books 225 Liberty Street New York, NY 10281

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eISBN: 978-1-68330-506-4

Vol. 17, No. 2 January 20, 2016

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CHAPTER 1

The Birth of Sherlock Holmes

How a Struggling Doctor Created the Worlds Greatest Detective

R. STONEHOUSE/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX

A FEW OF DOYLES PERSONAL items that were auctioned off by Christies in London in 2004.

I thought I would try my hand at writing a story... where science would take the place of romance.

A RTHUR C ONAN D OYLE

18591886

CULTURE CLUB/GETTY

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, age six, with his artist father, Charles, in May 1865. An unstable alcoholic, Charles created some of his best artwork while institutionalized, most of it featuring elves, fairies, and the likeoddly reflecting his writer sons belief in the existence of such beings.

On March 8, 1886, a struggling doctor and author named Arthur Conan Doyle was writing his first novel between patient visits in Portsmouth, England. Though hed already published a clutch of undistinguished short stories, the key to literary success, he felt, lay in longer fiction. His first extended effort, The Narrative of John Smith , had been lost in the mail; another had been roundly rejected.