Examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work,
giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and
also attending to the wide range of his published work.
Twenty-first-century readers, television viewers, and moviegoers know
Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most
recognizable fictional detective. Holmes's enduring popularity has kept
Conan Doyle in the public eye. However, Holmes has taken on a life of
his own, generating a steady stream of critical commentary, while Conan
Doyle's other works are slighted or ignored. Yet the Holmes stories make
up only a small portion of Conan Doyle's published work, which includes
mainstream and historical fiction; history; drama; medical,
spiritualist, and political tracts; and even essays on photography. When
Doyle published - whatever the subject - his contemporaries took note.
Yet, outside of the fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, until recently
relatively little has been done to analyze the reception Conan Doyle's
work received during his lifetime and since his death.
This book examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan
Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their many
adaptations for print, visual, and online media, but attending to his
other contributions to turn-of-the-twentieth-century culture as well.
The availability of periodicals and newspapers online makes it possible
to develop an assessment of Conan Doyle's (and Sherlock Holmes's)
reputation among a wider readership and viewership, thus allowing for
development of a broader and more accurate portrait of Doyle's place in
literary and cultural history.
