SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE & SHERLOCK HOLMES

Hello everyone! 

I guess everybody knows one of the most famous detectives in literature of all times, Sherlock Holmes. This character was created by Arthur Conan Doyle, who was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was a physician and a prolific writer. He is known for writing fictional stories, fictional adventures, science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.  As mentioned above, Sherlock Holmes is his most well known character, but he also invented Professor Challenger, an aggressive, dominating figure who first appeared in the novel The Lost World. He also popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste, a British-built American-owned merchant brigantine famous for having been discovered on 5 December 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned. 

Many crimes have been solved by  Sherlock Holmes since 1887, when he was first introduced to the world in A Study in Scarlet. He is a London-based "consulting detective" whose abilities border on the fantastic, and he is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases. Holmes was featured in four novels and 56 short stories, and most of these works are narrated by Holmes’ friend, assistant and biographer Dr. John H. Watson. 

Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with Dr. Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage and again after his wife's death. Their residence is maintained by the landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. He also describes Holmes as an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. But what appears as chaos to others, to Holmes is a wealth of useful information.

We also know Holmes for his use of addictive drugs, such as cocaine to stimulate his brain, or morphine. Both Watson and Holmes, as we can see in many pictures and movies, are tobacco users, from cigarettes, cigars to pipes.

In 1893, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty apparently plunge to their deaths together in the story The Final Problem. But he had to bring Holmes back in 1901, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, dued to public outcry, and two years later in the short story The Adventure of the Empty House, in which the author explains that only Moriarty died, and the detective had arranged everything to be perceived as dead.

 

Conan Doyle’s works about Sherlock Holmes have been taken to the screen in many occasions since 1939. 

Probably, many of you are more familiar with the movie directed by Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson respectively.

You may also know the British tv show Sherlock, a contemporary adaptation of the Conan Doyle’s character. 

 

Or Elementary, another tv show, set in the US, which stars Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson, a female version of Holmes' companion.

marrodgom7