The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes [antikvár]

Introduction This volume completes the canon of the illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories reprinted from the Strand Magazine. It contains the short story series Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, a sinister novella which appeared in 1914-15, His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Hohnes and the last twelve stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Hohnes. Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the best-known of all fictional characters. From the finst appearance of the short stories in the Strand Magazine chronicling his extraordinary deductive powers, Holmes became a larger-than-life figure whose devotees were stricken when it seemed that the great detective had perished at the Reichenbach Falls in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Young men put mourning crepe in their hats, and the author was forced by public demand to resurrect his hero. From that day, a literary cult was bom and continues imabated to this day. Perhaps it is best exemplified by the Baker Street Irregulars, who exist to perpetuate the memory, methods and iconography of the great detective. Its members comprise diplomats, judges, academics as well as great numbers of ordinary readers who enjoy the romance and atmosphere of Conan Doyle's creation. Sherlock Holmes's method may be traced back to one of Doyle's teachers at the Edinburgh Infirmary. Joseph Bell used to enliven his lectures by encouraging his students to recognise a patient as a left-handed cobbler or as a retired sergeant of a Highland regiment who had served in Barbados, by the simple process of accurate observation and rational deduction. This inclined Doyle to attribute these qualities to a detective, and to cast that detective as a hero, which was unusual, if not unique, in English stories of the time. The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes was in 1887, in A I, •