Search Results for: Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH

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In a way, Robert E. Howard’s career is similar to that of Dashiell Hammett. Both men had huge impacts on their genres (Howard wrote many styles, but he’s best known for his sword and sorcery tales). Both were early practitioners in said genres. Both men wrote excellent stories for about a decade. And both men ended their careers on their own. Hammett, who seemed more interested in a dissolute lifestyle than in writing, effectively walked away from his typewriter. He…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

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Perhaps my favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is 1974’s The Return of Moriarty by John Gardner. In it, Professor Moriarty (who did not perish at the Reichenbach Falls) is a Victorian Era godfather, with a criminal organization the envy of the American mob in the Roaring Twenties. A sequel followed it the next year, The Revenge of Moriarty. The trilogy was completed with Moriarty, just a few weeks before Gardner passed away in 2008. Having completed one muddle of a screenplay…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: By Crom – Are Conan Pastiches Official?

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Today’s post is actually about Robert E. Howard’s Conan, but (in a stunning surprise) it’s got some Sherlock Holmes at the foundation. No, Conan never met the great detective… Hopefully you’ve been checking in on our summer series, Discovering Robert E. Howard. There are plenty more posts coming, so stay tuned. While I very much like Howard and his works, I came late to his stories and I’m certainly no expert. There is one area I’ve found…curious, which relates to…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Shovel’s Painful Predicament

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I wanted to have a little bit of fun this week. You, enlightened reader, have heard about William Gillette’s curtain raiser play, The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, because you wouldn’t dare miss a PLoSH post, right? I am a serious fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the hard boiled genre of mystery fiction (which you also know because you’ve read the many columns I’ve written on both subjects…). Since Painful Predicament.. is a parody of Holmes, I decided to…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

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Now, it’s certainly possible that I’m clueless (and I do LOVE Without a Clue), but I don’t think I’ve got the following all wrong regarding BBC’s Sherlock. Except for the grumpy old man contingent (‘Get Sherlock out of modern day!’), fans of Holmes, including scholarly geeks like me who make their own newsletter, overwhelmingly liked this new show and the three episode season one. I don’t know too many Holmes fans (other than GOM group: see above) who disliked this show. Even…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sidney Paget Draws the Great Detective

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Last month, I mentioned that it was illustrator Sidney Paget who first adorned the head of Sherlock Holmes with a deerstalker. Along with Frederic Dorr Steele, Paget is certainly one of the two most significant illustrators of the great detective. Baker Street Essays is one of my two, free, online newsletters. The most recent issue (#5, February 2014) contained my essay, “The Illustrated Holmes.” Strongly influenced by Walter Klinefelter’s excellent (though black and white) book, Portrait of a Profile, I…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Carroll John Daly and the Birth of Hard-Boiled

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Quiz time: Who invented the hard-boiled school of fiction? And who was the first hard-boiled private eye? If you answered Carroll John Daly and Race Williams, you’d be like most folks. And you’d only be half right. In December of 1922, Daly’s “The False Burton Combs” appeared in Black Mask Magazine and the hard-boiled school was born. In April of 1923, “It’s All in the Game” (which I’ve yet to read), with an unnamed protagonist, was printed. And on May…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Why Solar Pons?

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I am a major fan of Solar Pons, The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street. I wrote about him for Black Gate here and here. Fu Manchu expert William Patrick Maynard wrote about Pons and an unnamed but clearly Manchu here. We know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us 56 short stories and 4 novels (novellas, really) featuring Sherlock Holmes. And there have been many television shows and movies with the world’s first private consulting detective. And the number of…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: On Screen Before Norwood

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Screen depictions of the great detective have been a staple topic here at The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. And because you assuredly read this post (actually, you might have: this has turned out to be my most popular PloSH post. I think it’s an error in the counting macro, but I’ll take it!), you know that in 1921 Eille Norwood and Stoll Films began their very popular series of Holmes silent films. So today, we’ll look at the pre-Twenties career…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Looking at The Bruce Partington Plans

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Solar Pons is, of course, the next best thing to Sherlock Holmes (which you know because you read THIS post, right?). I’m a Pons fan and I run www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street. Along with my two free, electronic newsletters (The Solar Pons Gazette and Baker Street Essays), the heart of the site is a collection of (non-spoiler) case commentaries for August Derleth’s stories. Some day, it will also host commentaries for the…

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