Holmes fans take note!

[ghost of miles]

My wife & I just picked up the new annotated Sherlock Holmes short stories as an early Christmas present for ourselves. We have the Oxford set, but after hearing the piece on this new two-volume edition on NPR last Sunday, we got the bug yet again... lots of contemporary photographs of Victorian England, as well as essays & footnotes on Victorian culture--all of the Strand illustrations and some previously unpublished ones as well.

And then there's David Grann's article in the new New Yorker on the apparent murder (or was it?) of Sherlockian scholar Richard Lancelyn Green this past March. Unfortunately the article is not online, although a Q & A with Grann about the piece is. There's even a weird Pentagon connection to the story, which is rather Doylesian in and of itself.

[Chuck Nessa]

Not a Johnny Wadd thread? Never mind. B-) B-)

[ghost of miles]

A sick & twisted wit you have, Mr. Nessa... is that why I'm laughing so hard?

Not sure what an annotated edition of Johnny Wadd would entail...

[Dmitry]

Was there ever a consensus on who was the basis of Holmes's character?

I remember reading that it was based on a medical school professor of Doyle's, Dr. Joseph Bell.

I own the venerable Oxford 2 vol. set, but will browse the new edition for sure.

[ghost of miles]

Was there ever a consensus on who was the basis of Holmes's character?

I remember reading that it was based on a medical school professor of Doyle's, Dr. Joseph Bell.

Yes, Bell was certainly much of the inspiration for Holmes--particularly the methods of observation that he demonstrated to his students.

[connoisseur series500]

I was a big fan of Holmes as a youth. Probably wouldn't be a bad time to read some of the books again.

Doyle wrote what is known as ratiocinative stories and novels, likely based on Poe's "Rue Morgue" story involving Mr. Dupin. (Don't know if my spelling is accurate here.)

[ghost of miles]

You might really enjoy the new annotated edition, Conn, in that case. Unlike many others, I never got around to reading Doyle's Holmes books until adulthood, and still haven't read all of the later stories and novels (post-"Empty House"). Part of my enthusiasm for them now stems from my wife's long-running interest in Victorian culture, an interest she's passed on to me (for so long merely a 20th-century Americanist ). The Klinger is replete with long, scholarly-but-accessible footnotes to the stories, and the photos & illustrations are very nice as well. If a reader is mostly interested in simply the stories themselves, and less concerned with their origins and allusions, then the new set is probably a bit much... but for anyone who wants to probe the texts more deeply, it might be a good item to put on the holiday-gift list.

[Dmitry]

Poe's THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is considered the mother of all modern detective stories.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18--, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin...

[ghost of miles]

Poe's THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is considered the mother of all modern detective stories.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18--, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin...

Sad to say I haven't gotten around to reading those yet, though I picked up a cool old Modern Library Giant of Poe's stories not long ago (my Modern Library fetish is a subject for another thread altogether). An omission I seriously need to rectify!

[connoisseur series500]

Poe's THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is considered the mother of all modern detective stories.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18--, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin...

Sad to say I haven't gotten around to reading those yet, though I picked up a cool old Modern Library Giant of Poe's stories not long ago (my Modern Library fetish is a subject for another thread altogether). An omission I seriously need to rectify!

Modern Library editions are terrific! Have to be careful with the translations of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky however. Maude is fine, but Constance Garnett is awful.

Ghost, you'll love Poe. Great writer and much better than Conan Doyle. I've ready everything by Poe, though it has been an awfully long time since I did read him.

[Brad]

I read these all when I was a kid and have a Doubleday edition from the 60s. Do you think this is worth picking up?

[neveronfriday]

I'm gonna go with the "Complete Peanuts" slipcased edition of the first two volumes instead.

[medjuck]

Has anyone compared this to the old Willam Baring-Gould "Annotated Sherlock Holmes". (Or is this a new edition of that one?) I found the conceit of pretending that Holmes and Watson were real people annoying. I would have much rather had annotations that told us about Conan-Doyle and the publication history of the stories.

[Jim Alfredson]

I thought this was going to be about Groove Holmes. Damn.

[BruceH]

I'm gonna go with the "Complete Peanuts" slipcased edition of the first two volumes instead.

Good man. You won't be sorry.

[connoisseur series500]

I thought this was going to be about Groove Holmes. Damn.

He's good too!

[ghost of miles]

I thought this was going to be about Groove Holmes. Damn.

In other words, you & Chuck both thought this thread was going to be about organs.

[ghost of miles]

"I'll take 'Holmes' for $200, Jack."

"This American author wrote what some consider to be the first 'Beat Generation' novel, as well as a fictional work based on the lives of jazz musicians Lester Young and Charlie Parker."

"Who was John Clellan Holmes?"

"Correct!" DING DING DING DING DING!!!

[JohnJ]

And I thought it was a Rupert Holmes thread. "If you like Pina Coladas, and a walk in the rain..."