Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in history, with a popularity that has never waned since catching the imagination of his late-Victorian readership. This Companion explores Holmes' popularity and his complex relationship to the late-Victorian and modernist periods; on one hand bearing the imprint of a range of Victorian anxieties and preoccupations, while on the other shaping popular conceptions of criminality, deviance, and the powers of the detective. This collection explores these questions in three parts. 'Contexts' explores late-Victorian culture, from the emergence of detective fiction to ideas of evolution, gender, and Englishness. 'Case Studies' reads selected Holmes adventures in the context of empire, visual culture, and the gothic. Finally, 'Holmesian Afterlives' investigates the relationship between Holmes and literary theory, film and theatre adaptations, new Holmesian novels, and the fandom that now surrounds him.
List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Textual note; 1. Introduction Janice M. Allan and Christopher Pittard; Part I. Contexts: 2. Holmes and the history of detective fiction Merrick Burrow; 3. Doyle, Holmes and Victorian publishing Clare Clarke; 4. Doyle, Holmes and London Stephen Knight; 5. Englishness and rural England Christine Berberich; 6. Gender and sexuality in Holmes Stacy Gillis; 7. Doyle and evolution Jonathan Cranfield; 8. Doyle and the criminal body Stephan Karschay; 9. Holmes, law and order Jeremy Tambling; Part II. Case Studies: 10. The empires of A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four Caroline Reitz; 11. Sidney Paget and visual culture in The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Christopher Pittard; 12. Gothic returns: The Hound of the Baskervilles Janice M. Allan; Part III. Holmesian Afterlives: 13. Holmes and literary theory Bran Nicol; 14. Adapting Holmes Neil McCaw; 15. Neo-Holmesian fiction Catherine Wynne; 16. Sherlockian fandom Roberta Pearson; Further reading; Index.
Janice M. Allan is Associate Dean Academic, at the School of Arts and Media, University of Salford. She has published widely on nineteenth-century popular fiction as well as constructions of gender and literary value and is Executive Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection. Christopher Pittard is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction (2011), and numerous articles and chapters on Victorian popular culture and detective fiction.
Reviews for The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes
'An exceptional bibliography completes this volume, which will be particularly useful for beginning Holmesians ... Recommended.' B. Diemert, Choice 'An exceptional bibliography completes this volume, which will be particularly useful for beginning Holmesians ... Recommended.' B. Diemert, Choice
