About Mr Sherlock Holmes
In all of literature there are very few characters who pass into the common language. Even the most illiterate being knows what is meant when somebody is called "a proper little Romeo" and when a person is described as being "tighter than Shylock". Even better known is the ace detective Sherlock Holmes.
Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Holmes featured in four novels and some fifty-six short stories from the pen of the master story-teller. Doyle himself considered that Holmes distracted him from more serious work and he killed the sleuth off in 1893 by casting him down the Reichenbach Falls. However such was the demand for more Holmes stories that Doyle resurrected him in 1901 and wrote further tales until 1927. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930 but by then Holmes and his faithful companion Dr Watson, who narrates the stories, had taken on lives of their own and had become figures of almost mythical status.
Because readers clamoured for more and more stories about Sherlock Holmes, other writers adopted the well-loved characters and Holmes and Watson have appeared in many films, plays and even musicals! But the pair are most comfortable on the written page and many authors have been tempted to emulate the great originator.
Alas, some authors have let their imaginations run riot and Holmes has been involved with Jack the Ripper, Dracula, the Titanic, and flying saucers to name but a few. He has been placed in modern America, into the future and far into the past; we have been given his schooldays, his biography and various clones. Poor old Holmes has been mangled and distorted to provide fodder for many ludicrous yarns and unbelievable concepts.
However, some authors have sincerely attempted to imitate the authentic Conan Doyle style and many of these tales are credible and entertaining. Such stories have become known by the term pastiche. This is unfortunate as the word really means a work made up of parts from other pieces, however, pastiche also means a work carried out in sincere imitation of another and it is in this sense that new Holmes stories are referred to as pastiches.
The best of the pastiches do not attempt to stretch the accepted boundaries of the original canon. The conventions are observed and the author who knows his job will ensure that nothing anachronistic appears in his work. A sense of period is essential if the reader is to find himself comfortably at home in the late Victorian era.
The true joy of the pastiche is to imagine that Sir Arthur has once more taken up his pen and given us a further batch of splendid Sherlock Holmes tales. One of the best collections of pastiches in recent times is THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF MR SHERLOCK HOLMES.
If you would like to know more about the third edition of this well-received work please click on the image above.