The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes

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When it wants to that is. Some details are very disenfranchising and flat out unrealistic. And typical of Victorian lit., women are downplayed so much, also the natives in Britain's colonies. This is majorly disappointing, and at times extremely offensive but the beauty of the work is only slightly marred. A Favourite Beautiful Quote: “[T]he heath-covered countryside, with the glowing clumps of flowering gorse, seemed all the more beautiful to eyes which were weary of the duns and drabs and slate-greys of London. Holmes and I walked along the broad, sandy road inhaling the fresh morning air, and rejoicing in the music of the birds and the fresh breath of the spring. From a rise of the road on the shoulder of Crooksbury Hill, we could see the grim Hall bristling out from amidst the ancient oaks, which, old as they were, were still younger than the building which they surrounded.” We can discuss that once we are on the train," replied Holmes firmly. And, true to his word, he said no more until we were comfortably ensconced in the First Class carriage of the Dover Express. Holmes was a towering genius in so many ways. Dr. Watson gives the stability, where Holmes in his creativity is sometimes off kilter, but we love him, and we are always mesmerized by how he can solve cases.

Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. Holmes was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. Good gracious, Holmes!” I cried. “You don't mean to say that you've been walking about London with that thing?” I have solved the case, Watson." He sat up, brushing a fried egg from the lapel of his dressing gown. "Allow me to elucidate."

When Conan Doyle started writing about the private detective, Holmes was a self-proclaimed anomaly, something that didn’t really exist in our world or at any point in history.

The author, John Le Carre wrote in November 14, 2006, as he reviewed the 150th printing of this edition, “Dr. Watson doesn’t write to you, he talks to you, with Edwardian courtesy, across a glowing fire. His voice has no barriers or affections. It is clear, energetic and decent, the voice of a tweedy, no-nonsense colonial Britisher at ease with himself.” I've been reading this doorstop off and on for a little over a year now, with the advantage of having read "Hound of the Baskervilles" some years ago and a handful of other stories here and there. Most of the stories are highly atmospheric and if you've ever been to England it's very easy to immerse yourself in the narrative, which I thought was marvelous.

Sidney Paget, the Artist Who Illustrated the Sherlock Holmes Stories

The role these days tends to devote itself to his crippling psychological shortcomings, resulting in a string of drug-fueled, obsessive-compulsive Holmeses played by people like Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, spun from the same cloth as Hugh Laurie's Gregory House. Visualize the reaction of a modern fan come late to the source material, who finds Holmes's drug use subdued and eventually terminated, his interpersonal relationships healthy and continuing, a police department that holds him in admiration, and nary a deerstalker in sight. (Wonder also at Holmes occasionally slipping into pseudoscience, such as trying to uncover personality traits through handwriting analysis.)