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One of the last remaining textile mill boarding houses in Lowell, Massachusetts, on right; part of the Lowell National Historical Park

A boarding house, is a house (often a family home) in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed and board", that is, at least some meals as well as accommodation. A "lodging house", also known in the United States as a "rooming house", may or may not offer meals. Lodgers legally only obtain a licence to use their rooms, and not exclusive possession, so the landlord retains the right of access.

Overview[link]

Old Boarding House Recovery Engagement Center, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Maroochydore Boarding House, Queensland, ca. 1917

Dinner in a miners' boarding house in northern Canada

Formerly boarders would typically share washing, breakfast and dining facilities; in recent years it has become common for each room to have its own washing and toilet facilities. Such boarding houses were often found in English seaside towns (for holidaymakers) and college towns (for students). It was common for there to be one or two elderly long-term residents.

Boarders can often arrange to stay bed-and-breakfast (bed and breakfast only), half-board (bed, breakfast and dinner only) or full-board (bed, breakfast, lunch and dinner). Especially for families on holiday with children, boarding (particularly on a full-board basis) was an inexpensive alternative and certainly much cheaper than staying in all but the cheapest hotels. In the United Kingdom, boarding houses were typically run by landladies, some of whom maintained draconian authority in their houses: the residents might not be allowed to remain on the premises during the daytime and could be subject to rigorous rules and regulations, stridently enforced.^[1]

Bed and breakfast accommodation (B&B), which exists in many countries in the world (e.g. the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia), is a specialised form of boarding house in which the guests or boarders normally stay only on a bed-and-breakfast basis, and where long-stay residence is rare.

However some B&B accommodation is made available on a long-term basis to UK local authorities who are legally obliged to house persons and families for whom they have no social housing available. Some such boarding houses allow large groups with low incomes to share overcrowded rooms, or otherwise exploit people with problems rendering them vulnerable, such as those with irregular immigration status. Such a boarding-house may well cease to be attractive to short-term lodgers, and the residents may remain in unsatisfactory accommodation for long periods. Much old seaside accommodation is so used, since cheap flights have reduced demand for their original seasonal holiday use.

Apart from the worldwide spread of the concept of the B&B, there are equivalents of the British boarding houses elsewhere in the world. For example, in Japan, minshuku are an almost exact equivalent although the normal arrangement would be the equivalent of the English half-board. In Hawaii, where the cost of living is high and incomes barely keep pace, it is common to take in lodgers (who are boarders in English terminology) that share the burden of the overall rent or mortgage payable.

In the Indian subcontinent boarders are also known as paying guests. Paying guests stay in a home and share a room with domestic facilities. Rates are nominal and monthly charges are usually inclusive of food, bed, table and a cupboard. The rent can go higher for a room in an upscale locality with facilities like single occupancy, air conditioning and high-speed wireless internet access.

In popular culture[link]

Sherlock Holmes lived in a boarding house at 221b Baker Street, of which the landlady Mrs. Hudson provided some domestic service.

H. G. Wells satirized boarding houses of the Edwardian era in his novel The Dream (1924).

Lynne Reid Banks's novel The L-Shaped Room is set in a run-down boarding house.

Arnold, from the critically acclaimed Nickelodeon television show Hey Arnold!, lives in a boarding house owned by his grandparents.

See also[link]

• Boarding school
• Call this a home? campaign for safe rooming houses (in Australia)
• List of human habitation forms
• Single room occupancy

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Paying Guests Accommodation

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boarding houses

Joyce in Zurich, c. 1918

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.

Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."^[1]

Biography[link]

1882–1904: Dublin[link]

Joyce's birth and baptismal certificate

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was baptised in the nearby St. Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February by Rev. John O'Mulloy. His godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. He was the eldest of ten surviving children; two of his siblings died of typhoid. His father's family, originally from Fermoy in Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's father and paternal grandfather both married into wealthy families, though the family's purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe (fl. 1680) was a stonemason from Connemara. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector (i.e., a collector of local property taxes) by Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of Bray 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from keraunophobia, as an overly superstitious aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of God's wrath.^[2]

In 1891, Joyce wrote a poem, Et Tu Healy on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic church and at the resulting failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that same year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette (a publisher of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by John's drinking and general financial mismanagement.^[3]

Joyce at age six, 1888

Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits', Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere.^[4] By the age of 16 however, Joyce appears to have made a break with his Catholic roots, a subject of varying degrees of dispute.^[5] Nonetheless, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life.^[6]

He enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French, and Italian. He also became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his review of Henrik Ibsen's New Drama was published in Fortnightly Review; it was his first publication and he received a note of thanks from the Norwegian dramatist himself. Joyce wrote a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost) during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin appeared as characters in Joyce's works. Joyce was first introduced to the Irish public by Arthur Griffith in his newspaper, The United Irishman, in November 1901. Joyce had written an article on the Irish Literary Theatre and his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce had it printed and distributed locally. Griffith himself wrote a piece decrying the censorship of the student James Joyce.^[7] In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as an English and Irish-speaking scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace, Clontarf, Dublin.^[8]

Bust of Joyce in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin

After graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this after finding the technical lectures in French too difficult. He stayed on for a few months, appealing for finance his family could ill afford and reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his father sent a telegraph which read, "NOTHER [sic] DYING COME HOME FATHER".^[9] Joyce returned to Ireland. Fearing for her son's impiety, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on 13 August, James and Stanislaus having refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside.^[10] After her death he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite appalling. He scraped a living reviewing books, teaching and singing—he was an accomplished tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904 Feis Ceoil.^[11]

On 7 January 1904 he attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected from the free-thinking magazine Dana. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called Stephen Hero. It was a fictional rendering of Joyce's youth, but he eventually grew frustrated with its direction and abandoned this work. It was never published in this form, but years later, in Trieste, Joyce completely rewrote it as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The unfinished Stephen Hero was published after his death.^[12]

The same year he met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Connemara, County Galway who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904, they first stepped out together, an event which would be commemorated by providing the date for the action of Ulysses.

Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of these drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in Phoenix Park; he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who brought him into his home to tend to his injuries.^[13] Hunter was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, and would serve as one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.^[14] He took up with medical student Oliver St John Gogarty, who formed the basis for the character Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. After staying in Gogarty's Martello Tower in Sandycove for six nights, he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved another student he lived with, Samuel Chenevix Trench (Haines in Ulysses), firing a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed.^[15] He walked all the way back to Dublin to stay with relatives for the night, and sent a friend to the tower the next day to pack his trunk. Shortly thereafter he eloped to the Continent with Nora.

1904–20: Trieste and Zurich[link]

Joyce in 1915

Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zurich, where he had supposedly acquired a post to teach English at the Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It turned out that the English agent had been swindled, but the director of the school sent him on to Trieste, which was part of Austria-Hungary until World War I (today part of Italy). Once again, he found there was no position for him, but with the help of Almidano Artifoni, director of the Trieste Berlitz school, he finally secured a teaching position in Pola, then also part of Austria-Hungary (today part of Croatia). He stayed there, teaching English mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers stationed at the Pola base, from October 1904 until March 1905, when the Austrians—having discovered an espionage ring in the city—expelled all aliens. With Artifoni's help, he moved back to Trieste and began teaching English there. He would remain in Trieste for most of the next ten years.^[16]

Joyce's statue in Trieste

Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George. Joyce then managed to talk his brother, Stanislaus, into joining him in Trieste, and secured him a position teaching at the school. Joyce's ostensible reasons were desire for Stanislaus's company and the hope of offering him a more interesting life than that of his simple clerking job in Dublin. In truth, though, Joyce hoped to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings.^[17] Stanislaus and Joyce had strained relations throughout the time they lived together in Trieste, with most arguments centring on Joyce's drinking habits and frivolity with money.^[18]

With the chronic wanderlust of Joyce's early years, he became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, having secured employment in a bank. He intensely disliked Rome, and moved back to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter Lucia was born in the summer of the same year.^[19]

Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, in order to visit his father and work on getting Dubliners published. He visited Nora's family in Galway, meeting them for the first time (a successful visit, to his relief). He also launched Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph, with backing from his Italian friends. While preparing to return to Trieste he decided to take one of his sisters, Eva, back with him to help Nora run the home. He spent only a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners hoping to set up a regular cinema in Dublin. The venture was successful (but quickly fell apart in Joyce's absence), and he returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow. Eva became very homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.^[20]

Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with his Dublin publisher, George Roberts, over the publication of Dubliners. His trip was once again fruitless, and on his return he wrote the poem "Gas from a Burner" as an invective against Roberts. After this trip, he never again came closer to Dublin than London, despite many pleas from his father and invitations from fellow Irish writer William Butler Yeats.

One of his students in Trieste was Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo. They met in 1907 and became lasting friends and mutual critics. Schmitz was a Catholic of Jewish origin and became the primary model for Leopold Bloom; most of the details about the Jewish faith in Ulysses came from Schmitz's responses to queries from Joyce.^[21] While living in Trieste, Joyce was first beset with eye problems that ultimately required over a dozen surgerical operations.^[22]

Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema magnate in Dublin. He also frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweeds to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills are displayed in the windows of their premises on Aston's Quay in Dublin. His skill at borrowing money saved him from indigence. What income he had came partially from his position at the Berlitz school and partially from teaching private students.

The so-called James-Joyce-Kanzel (plateau) at the confluence of the Sihl and Limmat rivers in Zurich where Joyce loved to relax

In 1915, after most of his students were conscripted in Trieste for World War I, he moved to Zurich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambrogio Ralli and Count Francesco Sordina, petitioned officials for an exit permit for the Joyces, who in turn agreed not to take any action against the emperor of Austria-Hungary during the war.^[23] There, he met one of his most enduring and important friends, Frank Budgen, whose opinion Joyce constantly sought through the writing of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. It was also here where Ezra Pound brought him to the attention of English feminist and publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who would become Joyce's patron, providing him thousands of pounds over the next 25 years and relieving him of the burden of teaching in order to focus on his writing. While in Zurich he wrote Exiles, published A Portrait..., and began serious work on Ulysses. Zurich during the war was home to exiles and artists from across Europe, and its bohemian, multilingual atmosphere suited him. Nevertheless, after four years he was restless, and after the war he returned to Trieste as he had originally planned. He found the city had changed, and some of his old friends noted his maturing from teacher to full-time artist. His relations with his brother (who had been interned in an Austrian prison camp for most of the war due to his pro-Italian politics) were more strained than ever. Joyce headed to Paris in 1920 at an invitation from Ezra Pound, supposedly for a week, but he ended up living there for the next twenty years.

1920–41: Paris and Zurich[link]

In Paris, 1924. Portrait by Patrick Tuohy.

Joyce set himself to finishing Ulysses in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from Miss Shaw Weaver meant he could devote himself full-time to writing again, as well as consort with other literary figures in the city. During this era, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems. He was treated by Dr Louis Borsch in Paris, undergoing nine operations from him until Borsch's death in 1929. Throughout the 1930s he travelled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and treatments for Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung at the time, who after reading Ulysses, concluded that her father had schizophrenia.^[24] Jung said she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was falling.^[25][26][27]

Grave of James Joyce in Zurich-Fluntern

In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant financial support), there is a good possibility that his books might never have been finished or published. In their literary magazine "Transition," the Jolases published serially various sections of Joyce's novel under the title Work in Progress. He returned to Zurich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France.

On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While he at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son before losing consciousness again. They were still on their way when he died 15 minutes later.

Joyce's body was interred in the Fluntern Cemetery near Zurich Zoo. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang Addio terra, addio cielo from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the burial service. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government later declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. Nora, whom Joyce had married in London in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried now by his side, as is their son George, who died in 1976.

Joyce and religion[link]

L. A. G. Strong, William T. Noon, Robert Boyle and others have argued that Joyce, later in life, reconciled with the faith he rejected earlier in life and that his parting with the faith was succeeded by a not so obvious reunion, and that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are essentially Catholic expressions.^[28] Likewise, Hugh Kenner and T.S. Eliot saw between the lines of Joyce’s work the outlook of a serious Christian and that beneath the veneer of the work lies a remnant of Catholic belief and attitude.^[29] Kevin Sullivan maintains that, rather than reconciling with the faith, Joyce never left it.^[30] Critics holding this view insist that Stephen, the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as Ulysses, is not Joyce.^[30] Somewhat cryptically, in an interview after completing Ulysses, in response to the question "When did you leave the Catholic Church", Joyce answered, "That's for the Church to say." ^[31] Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a dialectic approach, both assenting and denying, saying that Stephen’s much noted non serviam is qualified – "I will not serve that which I no longer believe…", and that the non serviam will always be balanced by Stephen’s "I am a servant…" and Molly’s "yes".^[32]

Umberto Eco compares Joyce to the ancient episcopi vagantes (stray bishops) in the Middle Ages. They left a discipline, not a cultural heritage or a way of thinking. Like them, the writer retains the sense of blasphemy held as a liturgical ritual.^[33]

In any case we have first-hand testimonies coming from the early Joyce, his brother Stanislaus Joyce, and his wife:

My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity -home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines. […] Six years ago I left the Catholic church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a beggar but I retained my pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do.^[34]

My brother’s breakaway from Catholicism was due to other motives. He felt it was imperative that he should save his real spiritual life from being overlaid and crushed by a false one that he had outgrown. He believed that poets in the measure of their gifts and personality were the repositories of the genuine spiritual life of their race and the priests were usurpers. He detested falsity and believed in individual freedom more thoroughly than any man I have ever known. […] The interest that my brother always retained in the philosophy of the Catholic Church sprang from the fact that he considered Catholic philosophy to be the most coherent attempt to establish such an intellectual and material stability.^[35]

When the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest offered a religious service, which Joyce's wife Nora declined, saying: "I couldn't do that to him."^[36] However, some critics and biographers have opined along the lines of Andrew Gibson: "The modern James Joyce may have vigorously resisted the oppressive power of Catholic tradition. But there was another Joyce who asserted his allegiance to that tradition, and never left it, or wanted to leave it, behind him." ^[37]

Major works[link]

[edit] Dubliners

Joyce's Irish experiences constitute an essential element of his writings, and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of its subject matter. His early volume of short stories, Dubliners, is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The stories incorporate epiphanies, a word used particularly by Joyce, by which he meant a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. The final and most famous story in the collection, "The Dead", was directed by John Huston as his last feature film in 1987.

[edit] A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to his subsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A Künstlerroman, Portrait is a heavily autobiographical^[38] coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel.^[39] Joseph Strick directed a film of the book in 1977 starring Luke Johnston, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna and John Gielgud.

[edit] Exiles and poetry

Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband and wife relationship, the play looks back to The Dead (the final story in Dubliners) and forward to Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.

Joyce also published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work was the satirical broadside "The Holy Office" (1904), in which he proclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the Celtic revival. His first full-length poetry collection Chamber Music (referring, Joyce explained, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot) consisted of 36 short lyrics. This publication led to his inclusion in the Imagist Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, who was a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes "Gas From A Burner" (1912), Pomes Penyeach (1927) and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). It was published by the Black Sun Press in Collected Poems (1936).

[edit] Ulysses

As he was completing work on Dubliners in 1906, Joyce considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called Leopold Bloom under the title Ulysses. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October, 1921. Three more months were devoted to working on the proofs of the book before Joyce halted work shortly before his self-imposed deadline, his 40th birthday (2 February 1922).

Thanks to Ezra Pound, serial publication of the novel in the magazine The Little Review began in 1918. This magazine was edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, with the backing of John Quinn, a New York attorney with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature. Unfortunately, this publication encountered censorship problems in the United States; serialisation was halted in 1920 when the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity.^[40] The novel was not published in the United States until 1933.^[41]

Partly because of this controversy, Joyce found it difficult to get a publisher to accept the book, but it was published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her well-known Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. An English edition published the same year by Joyce's patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, ran into further difficulties with the United States authorities, and 500 copies that were shipped to the States were seized and possibly destroyed. The following year, John Rodker produced a print run of 500 more intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs at Folkestone. A further consequence of the novel's ambiguous legal status as a banned book was that a number of "bootleg" versions appeared, most notably a number of pirate versions from the publisher Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.

With the appearance of both Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, 1922 was a key year in the history of English-language literary modernism. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other established literary technique to present his characters.^[42] The action of the novel, which takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model.^[43] In order to achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city. He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification.

Joyce talking with publishers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier at Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1920

The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around 8 a.m. and ending some time after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each chapter employs its own literary style, and parodies a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey. Furthermore, each chapter is associated with a specific colour, art or science, and bodily organ. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal schematic structure renders the book a major contribution to the development of 20th-century modernist literature.^[44] The use of classical mythology as an organising framework, the near-obsessive focus on external detail, and the occurrence of significant action within the minds of characters have also contributed to the development of literary modernism. Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised Ulysses," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles that had been taken from Homer.^[45]

[edit] Finnegans Wake

Having completed work on Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year.^[46] On 10 March 1923 he informed a patron, Harriet Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio, the Italians say. The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice or the leopard cannot change his spots."^[47] Thus was born a text that became known, first, as Work in Progress and later Finnegans Wake.

By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine transition. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego (this is one example of Joyce's numerous superstitions).^[48]

Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother, Stanislaus Joyce.^[49] In order to counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett, William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. At his 57th birthday party at the Jolases' home, Joyce revealed the final title of the work and Finnegans Wake was published in book form on 4 May 1939. Later, further negative comments surfaced from doctor and author Hervey Cleckley, who questioned the significance others had placed on the work. In his book, The Mask of Sanity, Cleckley refers to Finnegans Wake as "a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital."^[50]

Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the Wake of Ulysses as his "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles"^[51] to the Wake itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot.

Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation.^[52]

The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the "characters." Vico propounded a cyclical view of history, in which civilisation rose from chaos, passed through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapsed back into chaos. The most obvious example of the influence of Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening and closing words of the book. Finnegans Wake opens with the words "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." ("vicus" is a pun on Vico) and ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the." In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the book into one great cycle.^[53] Indeed, Joyce said that the ideal reader of the Wake would suffer from "ideal insomnia"^[54] and, on completing the book, would turn to page one and start again, and so on in an endless cycle of reading.

Legacy[link]

Statue of James Joyce on North Earl Street, Dublin.

Joyce's work has been subject to intense scrutiny by scholars of all types. He has also been an important influence on writers and scholars as diverse as Samuel Beckett,^[55] Seán Ó Ríordáin,^[56] Jorge Luis Borges,^[57] Flann O'Brien,^[58] Máirtín Ó Cadhain,^{[citation needed]} Salman Rushdie,^[59] Robert Anton Wilson,^[60] John Updike,^[61] David Lodge^[62] and Joseph Campbell.^[63] Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement".^[64]

Some scholars, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, have mixed feelings on his work, often championing some of his fiction while condemning other works. In Nabokov's opinion, Ulysses was brilliant,^[65] Finnegans Wake horrible^[66]—an attitude Jorge Luis Borges shared.^[67]

Joyce's influence is also evident in fields other than literature. The sentence "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" in Joyce's Finnegans Wake^[68] is the source of the word "quark", the name of one of the elementary particles, proposed by the physicist, Murray Gell-Mann in 1963.^[69] The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has written a book on the use of language in Ulysses, and the American philosopher Donald Davidson has written similarly on Finnegans Wake in comparison with Lewis Carroll. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used Joyce's writings to explain his concept of the sinthome. According to Lacan, Joyce's writing is the supplementary cord which kept Joyce from psychosis.^[70]

In 1999, Time Magazine named Joyce one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century,^[71] and stated; "Joyce ... revolutionised 20th century fiction".^[72] In 1998, the Modern Library, U.S. publisher of Joyce's works, ranked Ulysses No. 1, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man No. 3, and Finnegans Wake No. 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.^[73]

The work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide, and critical studies in scholarly publications, such as the James Joyce Quarterly, continue. Both popular and academic uses of Joyce's work were hampered by restrictions placed by Stephen J. Joyce, Joyce's grandson and executor of his literary estate.^[74] On January 1, 2012, those restrictions were lessed by the expiry of copyright protection for much of the published work of James Joyce.^[75][76]

Bibliography[link]

• Chamber Music (poems, 1907)
• Dubliners (short-story collection, 1914)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (novel, 1916)
• Exiles (play, 1918)
• Ulysses (novel, 1922)
• Pomes Penyeach (poems, 1927)
• Collected Poems (poems, 1936)
• Finnegans Wake (novel, 1939)

Posthumous publications

• Stephen Hero (precursor to A Portrait; written 1904–06, published 1944)
• Giacomo Joyce (written 1907, published 1968)
• Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1 (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)
• The Critical Writings of James Joyce (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellman, 1959)
• The Cat and the Devil (London: Faber and Faber, 1965)
• Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)
• Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)
• Selected Letters of James Joyce (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1975)
• The Cats of Copenhagen (Ithys Press, 2012)

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Burgess, Anthony, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader, Faber & Faber (1965); (published in America as Re Joyce) ASIN B000KW9R3Y; Hamlyn Paperbacks; Rev. ed edition (1982). ISBN 0-600-20673-4.
• Burgess, Anthony, Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce (1973), Harcourt (March 1975). ISBN 0-15-646561-2.
• Clark, Hilary, The Fictional Encyclopaedia: Joyce, Pound, Sollers. Taylor & Francis, 1990.
• Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce, Oxford University Press, New York 1959, 1982. ISBN 0-19-281465-6. Often praised as the finest biography of the 20th century.
• Levin, Harry (ed. with introduction and notes). The Essential James Joyce. Cape, 1948. Revised edition Penguin in association with Jonathan Cape, 1963.
• Levin, Harry, James Joyce. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941 (1960).
• Quillian, William H. Hamlet and the new poetic: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983.
• Read, Forrest. Pound/Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound's Essays on Joyce. New Directions, 1967.
• Special issue on James Joyce, In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism, Vol. 12, 2003. [Articles]
• Irish Writers on Writing featuring James Joyce. Edited by Eavan Boland (Trinity University Press, 2007).
• A Bash In The Tunnel (Brighton: Clifton Books 1970), edited by John Ryan, essays on James Joyce by Irish writers, namely Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan), Samuel Beckett, Ulick O'Connor & Edna O’Brien; expanded from:Envoy, April 1951, Vol. 5, No. 17.

External links[link]

Find more about James Joyce on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource

• Works by James Joyce at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about James Joyce in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• An Audio tour of the history of James Joyce's writings
• Joyce's Dublin – slideshow by Life magazine
• Bibliography of Joycean Scholarship and Literary Criticism
• Music in the Works of James Joyce
• James Joyce Centre (Dublin)
• The James Joyce Scholars' Collection from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.
• The James Joyce Collection from the University at Buffalo Libraries.
• Annoted Ulysses, marked up version of Ulysses.
• James Joyce from Dublin to Ithaca Exhibition from the collections of Cornell University
• Gisèle Freund Photographs of James Joyce in Paris at University of Victoria, Special Collections
• Archival material relating to James Joyce listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Portraits of James Joyce at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Gabriel Kahane (born 1981 in Venice Beach, California) is an American composer and singer-songwriter living in New York City. He is best known for his 2006 piece Craigslistlieder.

Biography[link]

Gabriel Kahane is the son of concert pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane.^[1] He attended the New England Conservatory before transferring to Brown University, where he wrote his first musical.

Kahane currently lives in Brooklyn and performs his original songs in venues across the United States. He has also recently finished the Public Theater’s commissioned musical, February House. Kahane can be followed on Twitter^[2] and tumblr.^[3]

Works[link]

Gabriel Kahane’s style is eclectic, most often mixing his classical background with modern folk-pop influences. He is often compared to Sufjan Stevens^[4] and Rufus Wainwright, and has in fact collaborated with both of these artists.

Kahane’s most well-known work, Craigslistlieder, was re-released by indie record label Family Records in 2008,^[5] and sets actual Craigslist ads to a musical cycle. Other artists have covered this voice-and-piano piece.^[6]

Kahane released an album, Gabriel Kahane, also on Family Records, in 2008, receiving positive reviews.^[7]

In the Spring of 2010, Gabriel Kahane performed as part of the American Songbook at Lincoln Center, garnering praise from the New York Times ^[8] During the 2010-11 season, he performed with cellist Alisa Weilerstein in a duo recital featuring music composed by Kahane.^[9]

In September 2011, Kahane released his second singer-songwriter album, Where Are The Arms, on 2nd Story Sound Records.

Theater[link]

Kahane has worked with New York City theater company Les Freres Corbusier as musical director (works include A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant and the LA production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson). Kahane has been commissioned by the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia and the Public Theater in New York City.^[10]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gabriel Kahane

• Kahane's official website, at which his songs can be found.
• IMG Artist Profile
• Brooklyn Vegan Review
• Blog Profile on Gabriel Kahane

This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; suggestions may be available. (May 2010)

Joan Morrissey is widely considered to be "Newfoundland's First Lady Of Song".^[1] Born in St. John's, Newfoundland on January 23, 1933, she was one of ten children. Entering the workforce at only thirteen years of age, she quickly moved up in the music industry of her home province of Newfoundland. Starting in the early 1960s, she began her career as a singer hosting and singing on local radio programs on CJON, VOCM, and CBC Radio.

Death[link]

Though the events that culminated in her suicide are not certain, Joan had undergone open heart surgery in October 1977 which left scarring on her chest. It was subsequently reported that she had been severely depressed since her operation and committed suicide on January 10, 1978 at her home in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland.^[2][3]

Acclaim[link]

With the success of her second album, "Home Brew" selling 50,000 copies, and reaching gold status, Joan received honorary awards from the Newfoundland Easter Seals, followed in 1972 by a Juno nomination. As well in the same year she was awarded Newfoundland's Musical Ambassador of Good Will by the Provincial Government.^[4] Many her of songs are an homage to Newfoundland lifestyle and are still heard on Canadian radio stations today. Some of her most notable songs include "Thank God We're Surrounded by Water", and "CN Bus". A recently published biography, Yes My Dear..., was nominated for the 2005 Heritage and History Award for Newfoundland and Labrador.^[5]

Discography[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

• Yes My Dear... The Life and Times of Joan Morrissey

Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes character
Sherlock Holmes in a 1904 illustration by Sidney Paget
First appearance	A Study in Scarlet
Created by	Arthur Conan Doyle
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Consulting detective
Family	Mycroft Holmes (brother)
Nationality	British

Sherlock Holmes ( /ˈʃɜrlɒk ˈhoʊmz/)^[1] is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes 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, who first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. The first novel, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887 and the second, The Sign of the Four, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the first series of short stories in Strand Magazine, beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia in 1891; further series of short stories and two novels published in serial form appeared between then and 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914.

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Holmes himself ("The Blanched Soldier" and "The Lion's Mane") and two others are written in the third person ("The Mazarin Stone" and "His Last Bow"). In two stories ("The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Gloria Scott"), Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, while Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story. The first and fourth novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear, each include a long interval of omniscient narration recounting events unknown to either Holmes or Watson.

Inspiration for the character of Holmes[link]

Doyle said that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.^[2] Sir Henry Littlejohn, Lecturer on Forensic Medicine and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, is also cited as a source for Holmes. Littlejohn served as Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health of Edinburgh, providing for Doyle a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime.^[3]

Life[link]

Early life[link]

The first appearance of Holmes, 1887

Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes's life outside of the adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories; nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families portray a loose biographical picture of the detective.

An estimate of Holmes's age in the story "His Last Bow" places his birth in 1854; the story is set in August 1914 and he is described as being 60 years of age. Commonly, the date is cited as 6 January.^[4] However, an argument for a later birthdate is posited by author Laurie R. King, based on two of Conan Doyle's stories: A Study in Scarlet and "The Gloria Scott" Adventure. Certain details in "The Gloria Scott" Adventure indicate Holmes finished his second and final year at university in either 1880 or 1885. Watson's own account of his wounding in the Second Afghan War and subsequent return to England in A Study in Scarlet place his moving in with Holmes in either early 1881 or 1882. Together, these suggest Holmes left university in 1880; if he began university at the age of 17, his birth year would likely be 1861.^[5]

Holmes states that he first developed his methods of deduction while an undergraduate. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that, given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex (College) perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes's position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there".^[6]

His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students.^[7] According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take up detection as a profession,^[8] and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

From 1881, Holmes was described as having lodgings at 221B, Baker Street, London, from where he runs his consulting detective service. 221B is an apartment up 17 steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the "upper end" of the road. Until the arrival of Dr. Watson, Holmes worked alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass, including a host of informants and a group of street children he calls "the Baker Street Irregulars". The Irregulars appear in three stories: "A Study in Scarlet," "The Sign of the Four," and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".

Little is said of Holmes's family. His parents were unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great-uncle was Vernet, the French artist. His brother, Mycroft, seven years his senior, is a government official who appears in three stories^[9] and is mentioned in one other story.^[10] Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction, but he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London".

A portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget from The Strand Magazine, 1891 in "The Man with the Twisted Lip".

Life with Dr. Watson[link]

Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Dr. John H. Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death. Their residence is maintained by the landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

Watson has two roles in Holmes's life. First, he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. Second, he is Holmes's chronicler (his "Boswell" as Holmes refers to him). Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. Holmes is often described as criticising Watson's writings as sensational and populist, suggesting that they neglect to accurately and objectively report the pure calculating "science" of his craft.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it ["A Study in Scarlet"] with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.^[11]

—Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", The Sign of Four.

Nevertheless, Holmes's friendship with Watson is his most significant relationship. In several stories, Holmes's fondness for Watson—often hidden beneath his cold, intellectual exterior—is revealed. For instance, in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded in a confrontation with a villain; although the bullet wound proves to be "quite superficial", Watson is moved by Holmes's reaction:

It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

In all, Holmes is described as being in active practice for 23 years, with Watson documenting his cases for 17 of them.^[12]

Retirement[link]

In "His Last Bow", Holmes has retired to a small farm on the Sussex Downs in 1903–1904, as chronicled by Watson in his preface to the series of stories entitled "His Last Bow." It is here that he has taken up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". The story features Holmes and Watson coming out of retirement one last time to aid the war effort. Only one adventure, "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", which is narrated by Holmes as he pursues the case as a civilian, takes place during the detective's retirement. The details of his death are not known.

Habits and personality[link]

Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In The Musgrave Ritual, Watson describes Holmes thus:

Although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind ... [he] keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece ... He had a horror of destroying documents.... Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.^[7]

What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout the stories, Holmes would dive into his apparent mess of random papers and artefacts, only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.

Watson frequently makes note of Holmes's erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", wherein, according to Watson:

[Holmes] had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.^[13]

His chronicler does not consider Holmes's habitual use of a pipe, or his less frequent use of cigarettes and cigars, a vice. Nor does Watson condemn Holmes's willingness to bend the truth or break the law on behalf of a client (e.g., lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses) when he feels it morally justifiable.^[14] Even so, it is obvious that Watson has stricter limits than Holmes, and occasionally berated Holmes for creating a "poisonous atmosphere" of tobacco smoke.^[15] Holmes himself references Watson's moderation in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", saying, "I think, Watson, that I shall resume that course of tobacco-poisoning which you have so often and so justly condemned". Watson also did not condone Holmes's plans when they manipulated innocent people, such as when he toyed with a young woman's heart in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" although it was done with noble intentions to save many other young women from the clutches of the villainous Milverton.

Holmes is portrayed as a patriot acting on behalf of the government in matters of national security in a number of stories.^[16] He also carries out counter-intelligence work in His Last Bow, set at the beginning of the First World War. As shooting practice, the detective adorned the wall of his Baker Street lodgings with "VR" (Victoria Regina) in bullet pocks made by his pistol.^[7]

Holmes has an ego that at times borders on arrogant, albeit with justification; he draws pleasure from baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. He does not seek fame, however, and is usually content to allow the police to take public credit for his work. It is often only when Watson publishes his stories that Holmes's role in the case becomes apparent.^[17] Because of newspaper articles and Watson's stories, however, Holmes is well known as a detective, and many clients ask for his help instead of or alongside the police.^[18]

Holmes is pleased when he is recognised for having superior skills and responds to flattery, as Watson remarks, as a girl does to comments upon her beauty.

Holmes's demeanour is presented as dispassionate and cold. Yet when in the midst of an adventure, Holmes can sparkle with remarkable passion. He has a flair for showmanship and will prepare elaborate traps to capture and expose a culprit, often to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors.^[19]

Holmes is a loner and does not strive to make friends, although he values those that he has, and none higher than Watson. He attributes his solitary ways to his particular interests and his mopey disposition. In The Adventure of the Gloria Scott, he tells Watson that during two years at college, he made only one friend, Victor Trevor. Holmes says, "I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year;... my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all". He is similarly described in A Study in Scarlet as difficult to draw out by young Stamford.

Holmes's emotional state and mental health have been a topic of analysis for decades. At their first meeting in A Study in Scarlet, the detective warns Watson that he gets "in the dumps at times" and doesn't open his "mouth for days on end". Many readers and literary experts^{[citation needed]} have suggested Holmes showed signs of manic depression, with moments of intense enthusiasm coupled with instances of indolent self absorption. Other modern readers have speculated that Holmes may have Asperger's syndrome based on his intense attention to details, lack of interest in interpersonal relationships and tendency to speak in long monologues.^[20] The detective's isolation and near-gynophobic distrust of women is said to suggest the desire to escape; Holmes "biographer" William Baring-Gould and others, including Nicholas Meyer, author of the Seven Percent Solution, have implied a severe family trauma (i.e., the murder of Holmes's mother) may be the root cause.

Personal hygiene[link]

Holmes is described in The Hound of the Baskervilles as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his intensely practical pursuit of his profession, however, and appears in contrast with statements that, in the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, his hands are discoloured with acid stains and Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct experiments in chemistry and forensics.

Use of drugs[link]

Holmes occasionally uses addictive drugs, especially when lacking stimulating cases. He believes the use of cocaine stimulates his brain when it is not in use. He is a habitual user of cocaine, which he injects in a seven-per-cent solution using a special syringe that he keeps in a leather case. Holmes is also an occasional user of morphine but expressed strong disapproval on visiting an opium den. These drugs were legal in late 19th-century England. Both Watson and Holmes are serial tobacco users, including cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Holmes is expert at identifying tobacco-ash residues, having penned a monograph on the subject.

Dr. Watson strongly disapproves of his friend's cocaine habit, describing it as the detective's "only vice" and expressing concern over its possible effect on Holmes's mental health and superior intellect.^[21][22] In later stories, Watson claims to have "weaned" Holmes off drugs. Even so, according to his doctor friend, Holmes remains an addict whose habit is "not dead, but merely sleeping".^[23]

Financial affairs[link]

Holmes in his bed from "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

Although he initially needed Watson to share the rent of his comfortable residence at 221B Baker Street, Watson reveals in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", when Holmes was living alone, that "I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms," suggesting he had developed a good income from his practice, although it is seldom revealed exactly how much he charges for his services. In "A Scandal in Bohemia", he is paid the staggering sum of one thousand pounds (300 in gold and 700 in notes) as advance payment for "present expenses". In "The Problem of Thor Bridge" he avers: "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether".^[24]

This is said in a context where a client is offering to double his fees; however, it is likely that rich clients provided Holmes a remuneration greatly in excess of his standard fee. For example, in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes states that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably, while in "The Adventure of Black Peter", Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him, while he could devote weeks at a time to the cases of the most humble clients. Holmes also tells Watson, in "A Case of Identity", of a golden snuff box received from the King of Bohemia after "A Scandal in Bohemia" and a fabulous ring from the Dutch royal family; in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", Holmes receives an emerald tie-pin from Queen Victoria. Other mementos of Holmes's cases are a gold sovereign from Irene Adler ("A Scandal in Bohemia") and an autographed letter of thanks from the French President and a Legion of Honour for tracking down an assassin named Huret ("The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"). In "The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes "rubs his hands with glee" when the Duke of Holdernesse notes the 5,000 pound sterling sum, which surprises even Watson, and then pats the cheque, saying, "I am a poor man", an incident that could be dismissed as representative of Holmes's tendency toward sarcastic humour. Certainly, in the course of his career Holmes had worked for both the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe (including his own) and various wealthy aristocrats and industrialists and had also been consulted by impoverished pawnbrokers and humble governesses on the lower rungs of society.

Holmes has been known to charge clients for his expenses, and to claim any reward that might be offered for the problem's solution: he says in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" that Miss Stoner may pay any expenses he may be put to, and requests that the bank in "The Red-Headed League" remunerate him for the money he spent solving the case. Holmes has his wealthy banker client in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" pay him for the costs of recovering the stolen gems and also claims the reward the banker had put for their recovery.

Relationships with women[link]

The only woman to impress Holmes was Irene Adler, a character introduced in "A Scandal in Bohemia" who, according to Watson, was always referred to by Holmes as "the woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term and even mentions her name in other cases (although it is worth noting that all of the stories using Adler's name come after "A Scandal in Bohemia", which was the third tale published about Holmes and the first short story so Holmes may have shifted how he referred to Adler over time). Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, appearing in person in only one.^{[citation needed]}

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton," Holmes is engaged to be married, but only to gain information for his case. Although Holmes appears to show initial interest in some of his female clients (in particular, Violet Hunter in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"), Watson says he inevitably "manifested no further interest in the client when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems". Holmes finds their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they bring to him) invigorating, distinct from any romantic interest. These episodes show Holmes possesses a degree of charm; yet apart from the case of Adler, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]". Holmes states, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind"; in fact, he finds "the motives of women... so inscrutable.... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes;... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin".

As Doyle remarked to muse Joseph Bell, "Holmes is as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love". The only joy Holmes derives from the company of women is the problems they bring to him to solve. In The Sign of the Four, Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine", and Holmes is quoted as saying, "It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money". This points to Holmes's lack of interest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, leading Watson to remark that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times". At the end of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", Holmes states: "I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act as our lawless lion-hunter had done." In the story, the explorer Dr Sterndale had killed the man who murdered his beloved, Brenda Tregennis, to exact a revenge which the law could not provide. Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women". Again in The Sign of the Four, Watson quotes Holmes as saying, "I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them." Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent".

Methods of detection[link]

Holmesian deduction[link]

Holmes's primary intellectual detection method is abductive reasoning,^[25][26]. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other".^[27] Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his "deductions." "Holmesian deduction" appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles—which are the result of careful observation, such as Holmes's study of different kinds of cigar ashes—or inference to the best explanation.^[25][28][29] One quote often heard from Holmes is "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Sherlock Holmes's straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as may be observed in the following example, intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

It is simplicity itself ... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.

In this case, Holmes employed several connected principles:

• If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.
• If a London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.
• If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.
• If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, then they are likely to have been worn by him in the rain, when it is likely he became very wet.

By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of modus ponens), Holmes is able to infer from his observation that "the sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts" that:

"Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless" and "Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather".

Deductive reasoning allows Holmes to impressively reveal a stranger's occupation, such as a Retired Sergeant of Marines in A Study in Scarlet; a former ship's carpenter turned pawnbroker in "The Red-Headed League"; and a billiard-marker and a retired artillery NCO in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". Similarly, by studying inanimate objects, Holmes is able to make astonishingly detailed deductions about their owners, including Watson's pocket-watch in "The Sign of the Four" as well as a hat,^[30] a pipe,^[31] and a walking stick^[32] in other stories.

Yet Doyle is careful not to present Holmes as infallible—a central theme in "The Adventure of the Yellow Face".^[31] At the end of the tale a sobered Holmes tells Watson, “If it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you”.

Disguise[link]

Holmes displays a strong aptitude for acting and disguise. In several stories, he adopts disguises to gather evidence while 'under cover' so convincing that even Watson fails to penetrate them, such as in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Empty House" and "A Scandal in Bohemia". In other adventures, Holmes feigns being wounded or ill to give effect to his case, or to incriminate those involved, as in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" and "A Scandal in Bohemia".

Weapons and martial arts[link]

Pistols

Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them in the case of Watson often his old service revolver—a Mk II Adams Revolver, as was issued to British troops in the 1870s.^[33] Watson describes these weapons as being used on seven occasions: in The Sign of the Four, they both fire at the Andaman Islander. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, both Holmes and Watson fire. In "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Watson fires at and kills the mastiff. In "The Adventure of the Empty House", Watson pistol-whips Colonel Sebastian Moran. In "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Holmes pistol-whips Killer Evans after Watson is shot. In "The Musgrave Ritual", it is revealed that Holmes decorated the wall of their flat with a patriotic "V.R." done in bullet marks. In "The Problem of Thor Bridge", Holmes uses Watson's revolver in a reconstruction of the crime. The following revolvers have been connected with Holmes and Watson:

• A Webley Bulldog (carried by Holmes)^[33]

A Webley Bulldog

• A Webley RIC^[33]

An 1868 Webley RIC

• A Webley-Government "WG" Army Revolver^[33]

Holmes brandishing a weapon

Cane

Holmes, as a gentleman, often carries a stick or cane. He is described by Watson as an expert at singlestick and twice uses his cane as a weapon.^[34]

Sword

In "A Study in Scarlet" Watson describes Holmes as an expert with a sword—although none of the stories have Holmes using a sword.^[35] It is mentioned in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes practised fencing.

Riding crop

In several stories, Holmes appears equipped with a riding crop and in "A Case of Identity" comes close to thrashing a swindler with it. Using a "hunting crop", Holmes knocks a pistol from John Clay's hand in "The Red-Headed League". In "The Six Napoleons" it is described as his favourite weapon—he uses it to break open one of the plaster busts.

Fist-fighting

Holmes is described as a formidable bare-knuckle fighter. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes introduces himself to a prize-fighter as:

"The amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back". McMurdo responds by saying, "Ah, you're one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy".

Holmes engages in hand-to-hand combat with his adversaries on occasions throughout the stories, inevitably emerging the victor.^[36] It is mentioned also in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes trained as a boxer, and in "The Yellow Face" Watson comments that "he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen."

Martial arts

In "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death down the Reichenbach Falls. He states, "I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". The name "baritsu" appears to be a reference to the real-life martial art of Bartitsu, which combined jujitsu with Holmes's canonical skills of boxing and cane fencing.

Physical Condition

In several stories, Holmes is described or demonstrated as having above average physical strength. As an example, in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", Dr. Roylott, 6 feet tall and wide as a doorframe, demonstrates his strength by bending a fire poker in half. After the Doctor leaves, Holmes "said laughing. 'I am not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own.' As he spoke he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again." In "The Yellow Face" Watson comments of Holmes, that "Few men were capable of greater muscular effort."

Knowledge and skills[link]

Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr. Watson, by Sidney Paget.

In the first story, A Study in Scarlet, something of Holmes's background is given. In early 1881, he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. (When he appears for the first time, he is crowing with delight at having invented a new method for detecting bloodstains; in other stories he indulges in recreational home-chemistry experiments, sometimes filling the rooms with foul-smelling vapours.) An early story, "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", presents more background on what influenced Holmes to become a detective: a college friend's father richly complimented his deductive skills. Holmes maintains strict adherence to scientific methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction.

Holmes also makes use of phrenology, which was widely popular in Victorian times but now regarded as pseudo-scientific: In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", he infers from the large size of a man's hat that the owner is intelligent and intellectually inclined, on the grounds that “a man with so large a brain must have something in it”.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things. Dr. Watson subsequently assesses Holmes's abilities thus:

1. Knowledge of Literature – nil.

2. Knowledge of Philosophy – nil.

3. Knowledge of Astronomy – nil.

4. Knowledge of Politics – Feeble.

5. Knowledge of Botany – Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.

6. Knowledge of Geology – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.

7. Knowledge of Chemistry – Profound.

8. Knowledge of Anatomy – Accurate, but unsystematic.

9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature – Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.

10. Plays the violin well.

11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.

12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

13. loves chess

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

At the very end of A Study in Scarlet itself, it is shown that Holmes knows Latin and needs no translation of Roman epigrams in the original—though knowledge of the language would be of dubious direct utility for detective work, all university students were required to learn Latin at that time.

Later stories also contradict the list. Despite Holmes's supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognises the true identity of the supposed "Count von Kramm". Regarding nonsensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, even Goethe. He is able to quote from a letter of Flaubert to George Sand and in the original French. Indeed, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes is able to recognise works by Martin Knoller and Joshua Reynolds as such, saying, "Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur....Watson won't allow that I know anything of art, but that is mere jealousy, since our views upon the subject differ." He goes on to explain, "I know what is good when I see it."

Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Watson reports that in November 1895 "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus"—a most esoteric field, for which Holmes would have had to "clutter his memory" with an enormous amount of information which had absolutely nothing to do with crime-fighting—knowledge so extensive that his monograph was regarded as "the last word" on the subject.^[37] The later stories abandon the notion that Holmes did not want to know anything unless it had immediate relevance for his profession; in the second chapter of The Valley of Fear, Holmes instead declares that "all knowledge comes useful to the detective", and near the end of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" he describes himself as "an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers". One such scheme is solved using frequency analysis in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes's analysis of physical evidence is both scientific and precise. His methods include the use of latent prints such as footprints, hoof prints and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (A Study in Scarlet, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", The Hound of the Baskervilles, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), the use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", The Hound of the Baskervilles), the comparison of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity"), the use of gunpowder residue to expose two murderers ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), bullet comparison from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House"), analysis of small pieces of human remains to expose two murders (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box) and even an early use of fingerprints ("The Norwood Builder"). Holmes also demonstrates knowledge of psychology in "A Scandal in Bohemia", luring Irene Adler into betraying where she had hidden a photograph based on the "premise" that an unmarried woman will seek her most valuable possession in case of fire, whereas a married woman will grab her baby instead.

Despite the excitement of his life (or perhaps seeking to leave it behind), Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs to take up beekeeping ("The Second Stain") and wrote a book on the subject entitled "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen".^[38] His search for relaxation can also be seen in his love for music, notably in "The Red-Headed League", wherein Holmes takes an evening off from a case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin.^{[citation needed]}

He also enjoys vocal music, particularly Wagner ("The Adventure of the Red Circle").

The film Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), which speculates about Holmes's youthful adventures, shows Holmes as a brilliant secondary school student, being mentored simultaneously by an eccentric professor/inventor and his dedicated fencing instructor.

Influence[link]

Forensic science[link]

1852 microscope

Sherlock Holmes remains a great inspiration for forensic science, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yields small clues as to the precise sequence of events. He makes great use of trace evidence such as shoe and tire impressions, as well as fingerprints, ballistics and handwriting analysis, now known as questioned document examination. Such evidence is used to test theories conceived by the police, for example, or by the investigator himself. All of the techniques advocated by Holmes later became reality, but were generally in their infancy at the time Conan Doyle was writing. In many of his reported cases, Holmes frequently complains of the way the crime scene has been contaminated by others, especially by the police, emphasising the critical importance of maintaining its integrity, a now well-known feature of crime scene examination.

Owing to the small scale of the trace evidence (such as tobacco ash, hair or fingerprints), he often uses a magnifying glass at the scene, and an optical microscope back at his lodgings in Baker Street. He uses analytical chemistry for blood residue analysis as well as toxicology examination and determination for poisons. Holmes seems to have maintained a small chemistry laboratory in his lodgings, presumably using simple wet chemical methods for detection of specific toxins, for example. Ballistics is used when spent bullets can be recovered, and their calibre measured and matched with a suspect murder weapon.

Holmes was also very perceptive of the dress and attitude of his clients and suspects, noting style and state of wear of their clothes, any contamination (such as clay on boots), their state of mind and physical condition in order to infer their origin and recent history. Skin marks such as tattoos could reveal much about their history. He applied the same method to personal items such as walking sticks (famously in The Hound of the Baskervilles) or hats (in the case of The Blue Carbuncle), with small details such as medallions, wear and contamination yielding vital indicators of their absent owners.

An omission from the stories is the use of forensic photography. Even before Holmes's time, high quality photography was used to record accident scenes, as in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 and the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888.

In 2002, the Royal Society of Chemistry bestowed an honorary fellowship of their organisation upon Sherlock Holmes,^[39] for his use of forensic science and analytical chemistry in popular literature, making him the only (as of 2010) fictional character to be thus honoured.

Role in the history of the detective story[link]

Auguste Dupin in "The Purloined Letter"

Although Sherlock Holmes is not the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq, for both of whom the character openly expressed disdain or contempt), his name has become a byword for the part. His stories also include several detective story characters such as the loyal but less intelligent assistant, a role for which Dr Watson has become the archetype. The investigating detective became a popular genre with many authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers after the demise of Holmes, with characters such as Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. Forensic methods became less important than the psychology of the criminal, despite the strong growth in forensics in use by the police in the early 20th century.

Scientific literature[link]

Sherlock Holmes has occasionally been used in the scientific literature. John Radford (1999)^[40] speculates on his intelligence. Using Conan Doyle’s stories as data, Radford applies three different methods to estimate Sherlock Holmes’s IQ, and concludes that his intelligence was very high indeed, estimated at approximately 190 points. Snyder (2004)^[41] examines Holmes’s methods in the light of the science and the criminology of the mid to late 19th century. Kempster (2006)^[42] compares neurologists’ skills with those displayed by Holmes. Finally, Didierjean and Gobet (2008)^[43] reviewed the literature on the psychology of expertise by taking as model a fictional expert: Sherlock Holmes. They highlighted aspects of Doyle’s books that are in line with what is currently known about expertise, aspects that are implausible, and aspects that suggest further research.

Legacy[link]

Fan speculation[link]

The fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Conan Doyle are termed the "canon" by Sherlock Holmes fans. Early scholars of the canon included Ronald Knox^[44] in Britain and Christopher Morley in New York,^[45] the latter having founded the Baker Street Irregulars, the first society devoted exclusively to the canon of Holmes, in 1934.^[46]

Writers have produced many pop culture references to Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, or characters from the stories in homage, to a greater or lesser degree. Such allusions can form a plot development, raise the intellectual level of the piece, or act as Easter eggs for an observant audience.^[47]

Some have been overt, introducing Holmes as a character in a new setting, or a more subtle allusion, such as making a logical character live in an apartment at number 221B. One well-known example of this is the character Gregory House on the show House M.D, whose name and apartment number are both references to Holmes. Often the simplest reference is to dress anybody who does some kind of detective work in a deerstalker and Inverness cape.

However, throughout the entire novel series, Holmes is never explicitly described as wearing a "deerstalker hat". Holmes dons "his ear-flapped travelling cap" in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze". Sidney Paget first drew Holmes wearing the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" and subsequently in several other stories.^{[citation needed]}

"Elementary, my dear Watson"[link]

A third major reference is the oft-quoted but non-canonical catchphrase: "Elementary, my dear Watson". This phrase is never actually uttered by Holmes in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle. In the stories, Holmes often remarks that his logical conclusions are "elementary", in that he considers them to be simple and obvious. He also, on occasion, refers to Dr. Watson as "my dear Watson". The two fragments, however, never appear together. One of the closest examples to this phrase appears in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", when Holmes explains a deduction:

The first known use of this phrase was in the 1915 novel, Psmith Journalist, by P. G. Wodehouse. It also appears at the very end of the 1929 film, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first Sherlock Holmes sound film. William Gillette, who played Holmes on stage and radio, had previously used the similar phrase, Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow. The phrase might owe its household familiarity to its use in Edith Meiser's scripts for The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio series, broadcast from 1939 to 1947.

The Great Hiatus[link]

Holmes and Moriarty fighting over the Reichenbach Falls, by Sidney Paget.

Holmes aficionados refer to the period from 1891 to 1894—the time between Holmes's disappearance and presumed death in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House"—as "the Great Hiatus".^[48] It is notable, though, that one later story ("The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge") is described as taking place in 1892.

Conan Doyle wrote the first set of stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem," which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes's "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date).^[49][50] The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle revived Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s entitled "The Great Man Takes a Walk". The actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for another 24 years.

Some writers have come up with other explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the hiatus is depicted as a secret sabbatical following Holmes's treatment for cocaine addiction at the hands of Sigmund Freud, and presents Holmes making the light-hearted suggestion that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he had been killed by Moriarty, saying of the public: "They'll never believe you in any case".^{[citation needed]}

In his memoirs, Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but was never quite the same man. This is contradicted in part by Watson's evaluation in "The Adventure of Black Peter" that "I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year '95," which would have been 4 years after the fall over Reichenbach Falls. The differences in the pre- and post-Hiatus Holmes have in fact created speculation among those who play "The Great Game" (making believe Sherlock Holmes was a historical person). Among the more fanciful theories, the story "The Case of the Detective's Smile" by Mark Bourne, published in the anthology Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, posits that one of the places Holmes visited during his hiatus was Alice's Wonderland. While there, he solved the case of the stolen tarts, and his experiences there contributed to his kicking the cocaine addiction.^{[citation needed]}

Societies[link]

Statue of Sherlock Holmes on Picardy Place in Edinburgh, Conan Doyle's birthplace. The statue shows Holmes wearing an Inverness cape and a deerstalker cap.

In 1934, the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York were founded. Both are still active (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951). The London-based society is one of many worldwide who arrange visits to the scenes of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, such as the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.

The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scion societies"—offshoots—of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Sherlockian societies in many countries, such as India and Japan.^[51]

Museums[link]

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes's sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still open to the public. In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen, Switzerland another museum opened; naturally, they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character. A private collection of Conan Doyle is also housed in the Portsmouth City Museum which has a permanent exhibit, due to his importance in the city where he lived and worked for many years.

Adaptations and derived works[link]

The enduring popularity of Sherlock Holmes has led to hundreds of works based on the character – both adaptations into other media and original stories. The copyright in all of Conan Doyle's works expired in the United Kingdom in 1980 and are public domain there.^[52] All works published in the United States prior to 1923 are in the public domain; this includes all Sherlock Holmes stories with the exception of some of the stories contained within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. For works published after 1923 but before 1963, if the copyright was registered, its term lasts for 95 years.^[53] The Conan Doyle heirs registered the copyright to The Case Book (published in the USA after 1923) in 1981 through the Copyright Act of 1976.^[52][54][55]

Stage and screen adaptations[link]

William Gillette starring in his Sherlock Holmes, New York, c. 1900

Sherlock Holmes Baffled, the first screen portrayal of Holmes from 1900.

The Guinness World Records has consistently listed Sherlock Holmes as the "most portrayed movie character"^[56] with 75 actors playing the part in over 211 films. Holmes's first screen appearance was in the Mutoscope film Sherlock Holmes Baffled in 1900, albeit in a barely-recognisable form.^[57]

William Gillette’s 1899 play Sherlock Holmes, or The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner was a synthesis of several stories by Doyle, mostly based on A Scandal in Bohemia adding love interest, with the Holmes-Moriarty exchange from The Final Problem, as well as elements from The Copper Beeches and A Study in Scarlet. By 1916, Harry Arthur Saintsbury had played Holmes on stage more than a thousand times.^[58] This play formed the basis for Gillette's 1916 motion picture, Sherlock Holmes.

From 1921 to 1923, Stoll Pictures produced a series of silent black-and-white films based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Forty-five short films and two feature length films were produced^[59] featuring Eille Norwood in the role of Holmes and Hubert Willis cast as Dr Watson with the exception of the final film, The Sign of Four, where Willis was replaced with Arthur Cullin.

In a 1924 comedy film Sherlock Jr. Buster Keaton's character longs to be a detective.

The first sound film to feature Sherlock Holmes, was the sound-on-disk The Return of Sherlock Holmes, written by Basil Dean, and filmed in New York City in 1929. It starred Clive Brook as Sherlock Holmes. It supposedly marks the first use of the line, "Elementary, my dear Watson". The film exists today only as a silent picture because the sound disks were lost.^{[citation needed]}

Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes alongside Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson in fourteen US films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939 to 1946, as well as the radio show "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1939 to 1946 before passing the role to Tom Conway. The 1939 20th Century Fox Hound of the Baskervilles contains an unusually direct reference to Holmes' drug use in the last line of the film, "Watson, the needle". The Universal Pictures are distinctive for being set in the then contemporary post-World War II era.

Ronald Howard starred in 39 episodes of the Sherlock Holmes 1954 American TV series with Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. The storylines deviated from the books of Conan Doyle, changing characters and other details.

In 1959 Peter Cushing starred in Hammer Film Productions' The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), marking Holmes' first screen appearance in colour. He would return to the role several times in both film and television performances.

Fritz Weaver appeared as Sherlock Holmes in the musical Baker Street, which ran on Broadway between 16 February and 14 November 1965. Peter Sallis portrayed Dr. Watson, Inga Swenson appeared as The Woman, Irene Adler, and Martin Gabel played Moriarty. Virginia Vestoff, Tommy Tune, and Christopher Walken were also members of the original cast.^[60]

Acclaimed director Billy Wilder had long planned a roadshow motion picture about Holmes, in which he planned to have Peter O'Toole as Holmes and Peter Sellers as Watson. However, when The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes finally reached the screen in 1970, the roles had been given to Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely. The film was heavily edited after its release and parts of it are now lost. Though not a success at the time of release it is considered by some to be one of Wilder's late masterpieces.^{[citation needed]}

In The Return Of Sherlock Holmes, a TV movie aired in 1987, Margaret Colin stars as Dr. Watson's great-granddaughter Jane Watson, a Boston private eye, who stumbles upon Sherlock Holmes's (played by Michael Pennington) body in frozen suspension and restores the Victorian sleuth to life in the 1980s. The film was intended as a pilot for a TV series which never materialised. A similar plot line was used in Sherlock Holmes Returns: 1994 Baker Street where Dr Amy Winslow (played by Debrah Farentino) discovers Sherlock Holmes frozen in the cellar of house in San Francisco owned by a descendant of Mrs Hudson. Holmes (played by Anthony Higgins) froze himself in the hopes that crimes in the future would be less dull. He discovers that consulting detectives have been replaced by the police department's forensic science lab and that the Moriarty family are still the Napoleons of crime.

Jeremy Brett is generally considered the definitive Holmes,^[61] having played the role in four series of Sherlock Holmes, created by John Hawkesworth for Britain's Granada Television, from 1984 through to 1994, as well as depicting Holmes on stage. Brett's Dr Watson was played by David Burke (pre-hiatus) and Edward Hardwicke (post-hiatus) in the series. Jeremy Brett wished to be the best Sherlock Holmes the world had ever seen and conducted extensive research into the character and the author that created him. He strove to bring passion and life to the role and in his obituary it was said, "Mr. Brett was regarded as the quintessential Holmes: breathtakingly analytical, given to outrageous disguises and the blackest moods and relentless in his enthusiasm for solving the most intricate crimes."

Sculpture of Holmes and Watson, as portrayed in the Soviet series, at the UK embassy in Moscow

Nicol Williamson portrayed Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution with Robert Duvall playing Watson and featuring Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud. The 1976 adaption was written by Nicholas Meyer from his 1974 book of the same name, and directed by Herbert Ross.

Bob Clarke directed Christopher Plummer and James Mason in the 1979 created film Murder by Decree, which followed Holmes, hunting Jack the Ripper.

Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television broadcast a series of five made-for-TV films in a total of eleven parts, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, starring Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson.

Christopher Lee starred as Holmes in three screen adaptions, namely Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992) together with Morgan Fairchild as "The Woman".

In 2002 made-for-television movie Sherlock: Case of Evil, James D'Arcy starred as Holmes in his 20s. The story noticeably departs from the style and backstory of the canon and D'Arcy's portrayal of Holmes is slightly different from prior incarnations of the character, psychologically disturbed, an absinthe addicted, a heavy drinker and a ladies' man.

The Fox television series House contains numerous similarities and references to Holmes. Show creator David Shore has acknowledged this "subtle homage".^[62]

In the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, based on a story by Lionel Wigram and images by John Watkiss,^[63] directed by Guy Ritchie, the role of Holmes is performed by Robert Downey, Jr. with Jude Law portraying Watson. It is a reinterpretation which heavily focuses on Holmes's more anti-social personality traits as an unkempt eccentric with a brilliant analytical mind and formidable martial abilities, making this a very cynical incarnation of Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. won the Golden Globe Award for his portrayal.^[64] Downey Jr. returned in the 2011 sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

Independent film company The Asylum released the direct-to-DVD film Sherlock Holmes in January 2010. In the film, Holmes and Watson battle a criminal mastermind dubbed "Spring-Heeled Jack", who controls several mechanical creatures to commit crimes across London. Holmes (Ben Syder) is portrayed as considerably younger than most actors who have played him, and his disapproval of Scotland Yard is undertoned, though things like his drug addiction remain mostly unchanged. The film features a brother of Holmes's called Thorpe, who was invented by the producers of the film out of creative liberty. His companion Watson is played by Torchwood actor Gareth David-Lloyd.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes in Sherlock

Benedict Cumberbatch plays a modern-day version of the detective, with Martin Freeman as Watson, in the BBC One TV series Sherlock, which premiered on 25 July 2010. The series changes the books' original Victorian setting to the shady and violent present-day London. The show was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, best known as writers for the BBC television series Doctor Who. Says Moffat, "Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters."

Cumberbatch's Holmes was described by the BBC as:

He also uses modern technology, such as texting and blogging, to solve crimes,^[66] and in a nod towards changing smoking legislature, he has replaced his pipe with multiple nicotine patches, as London has forbidden smoking in most public areas, yet this interpretation of Holmes still finds nicotine to help the cognitive process.^[67]

Related and derivative works[link]

In addition to the Sherlock Holmes corpus, Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special" (1898) features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" clearly intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. His explanation for a baffling disappearance, argued in Holmes's characteristic style, turns out to be quite wrong—evidently Conan Doyle was not above poking fun at his own hero. A short story by Conan Doyle using the same idea is "The Man with the Watches". Another example of Conan Doyle's humour is "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924), a parody of the frequent Watson-Holmes breakfast table scenes. A further (and earlier) parody by Conan Doyle is "The Field Bazaar". He also wrote other material, especially plays, featuring Holmes. Many of these are collected in Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha edited by Jack Tracy, The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Peter Haining and The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes compiled by Richard Lancelyn Green.

In 1907, Sherlock Holmes began featuring in a series of German booklets. Among the writers was Theo van Blankensee. Watson had been replaced by a 19 year old assistant from the street, among his Baker Street Irregulars, with the name Harry Taxon, and Mrs. Hudson had been replaced by one Mrs. Bonnet. From number 10 the series changed its name to "Aus den Geheimakten des Welt-Detektivs". The French edition changed its name from "Les Dossiers Secrets de Sherlock Holmes" to "Les Dossiers du Roi des Detectives".^[68]

Sherlock Holmes's abilities as both a good fighter and an excellent logician have been a boon to other authors who have lifted his name, or details of his exploits, for their plots. These range from Holmes as a cocaine addict, whose drug-fuelled fantasies lead him to cast an innocent Professor Moriarty as a super villain (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), to science-fiction plots involving him being re-animated after death to fight crime in the future (Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century).

Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references in the canon to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"), notably The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle with John Dickson Carr, and The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Ken Greenwald, based rather closely on episodes of the 1945 Sherlock Holmes radio show that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and for which scripts were written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher. Others have used different characters from the stories as their own detective, e.g. Mycroft Holmes in Enter the Lion by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979) or Dr James Mortimer (from The Hound of the Baskervilles) in books by Gerard Williams.

Laurie R. King recreates Sherlock Holmes in her Mary Russell series (starting with The Beekeeper's Apprentice), set during the First World War and the 1920s. Her Holmes is (semi)retired in Sussex, where he is literally stumbled over by a teenage American girl. Recognising a kindred spirit, he gradually trains her as his apprentice and subsequently marries her. As of 2009^[update] the series includes nine novels and a novella tie-in with a book from King's present-time Kate Martinelli series, The Art of Detection.

Carole Nelson Douglas' series, the Irene Adler Adventures, is based on the character from Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia". The first book, Good Night, Mr. Holmes, retells that tale from Irene's point of view. The series is narrated by Adler's companion, Penelope Huxleigh, in a role similar to that of Dr. Watson.

The film They Might Be Giants is a 1971 romantic comedy based on the 1961 play of the same name (both written by James Goldman) in which the character Justin Playfair, played by George C. Scott, is convinced he is Sherlock Holmes, and manages to convince many others of same, including the psychiatrist Dr. Watson, played by Joanne Woodward, who is assigned to evaluate him so he can be committed to a mental institution.

The film Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) explores adventures of Holmes and Watson as boarding school pupils.^[69]

The Japanese anime series "Detective Conan", also called "Case Closed" in English, is an homage to Doyle's work.

The 2002 film The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire is loosely based on Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire".

In the 1980s Ben Kingsley played Dr. Watson in Without a Clue. In this film, the comic premise is that Dr. Watson is actually a brilliant detective, and that he has hired an actor, Sherlock Holmes (Michael Caine), to take credit for the cases that Watson has been writing about, to draw attention away from himself. The powerful criminal Dr. Moriarty is said to know that Sherlock Holmes has no abilities as a detective whatsoever.

The novel A Dog About Town by J. F. Englert makes reference to Sherlock Holmes, comparing the black Labrador retriever narrator, Randolph, to Doyle's detective as well as naming a fictitious spirit guide after him.^[70]

The Final Solution is a 2004 novel by Michael Chabon. The story, set in 1944, revolves around an 89-year-old long-retired detective who may or may not be Sherlock Holmes but is always called just "the old man", now interested mostly in beekeeping, and his quest to find a missing parrot, the only friend of a mute Jewish boy. The title references both Doyle's story "The Final Problem" and the Final Solution, the Nazis' plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.

In 2006, a southern California "vaudeville-nouveau" group known as Sound & Fury began performing a theatre in the round parody show entitled "Sherlock Holmes & The Saline Solution" which depicts Holmes as a bumbling figure guided by a slightly less clueless Watson. The show ran in Los Angeles as well as the Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals through 2009.

In a novella "The Prisoner of the Tower, or A Short But Beautiful Journey of Three Wise Men" by Boris Akunin published in 2008 in Russia as the conclusion of the book "Jade Rosary Beads", Sherlock Holmes and Erast Fandorin oppose Arsène Lupin on 31 December 1899.

In June 2010 it was announced that Franklin Watts books, a part of Hachette Children's Books are to release a series of four children's graphic novels by writer Tony Lee and artist Dan Boultwood in spring 2011 based around the Baker Street Irregulars during the three years that Sherlock Holmes was believed dead, between The Adventure of the Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House. Although not specifying whether Sherlock Holmes actually appears in the books, the early reports include appearances by Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade and Irene Adler.

In 2011, Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider novels, The Power of Five and TV's Foyle's War, had published a new "authorised" Sherlock Holmes novel: The House of Silk, commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate. The novel is presented as a continuation of Conan Doyle's work and is narrated by Dr. Watson. ^[71]

The original stories[link]

The original Sherlock Holmes stories consist of fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Novels[link]

• A Study in Scarlet (published 1887, in Beeton's Christmas Annual)
• The Sign of the Four (published 1890, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine)
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised 1901–1902 in The Strand)
• The Valley of Fear (serialised 1914–1915 in The Strand)

Short stories[link]

For more detail see List of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories.

The short stories, originally published in periodicals, were later gathered into five anthologies:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (contains stories published 1891–1892 in The Strand)
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (contains stories published 1892–1893 in The Strand as further episodes of the Adventures)
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes (contains stories published 1903–1904 in The Strand)
• The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (including His Last Bow) (contains stories published 1908–1913 and 1917)
• The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (contains stories published 1921–1927)

See also[link]