Volume 22, Number 2 · February 20, 1975
Sherlockology
By Clive James
Sherlock Holmes Collected Edition
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, 9 volume set pp., £21.20
A Study in Scarlet
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Hugh Greene
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£1.95)
The Sign of Four
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Graham Greene
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£1.95)
The Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by John Fowles
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£1.95)
The Valley of Fear
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Len Deighton
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£1.95)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Eric Ambler
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£2.95)
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Kingsley Amis
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£2.95)
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Angus Wilson
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£2.95)
His Last Bow
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by Julian Symons
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£2.50)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle, with an introduction by C. P. Snow
Jonathan Cape and John Murray, (£2.50)
Sherlock Holmes Detected
by Ian McQueen
Drake, 226 pp., $8.95
The London of Sherlock Holmes
by Michael Harrison
Drake, 232 pp., $6.95
In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes
by Michael Harrison
Drake, 292 pp., $6.95
The Return of Moriarty
by John Gardner
Putnam's, 366 pp., $8.95
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, MD
as edited by Nicholas Meyer
Dutton, 253 pp., $6.95
Naked Is the Best Disguise
by Samuel Rosenberg
Bobbs-Merrill, 203 pp., $8.95
The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook
edited by Peter Haining
Potter, 128 pp., $10.00
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote little about Sherlock Holmes compared with what has been written by other people since. Sherlock has always been popular, on a scale never less than worldwide, but the subsidiary literature which has steadily heaped up around him can't be accounted for merely by referring to his universal appeal. Sherlockology—the adepts call it that, with typical whimsy—is a sort of cult, which has lately become a craze. The temptation to speculate about why this should be is one I don't propose to resist, but first there is the task of sorting the weighty from the witless in the cairn of Sherlockiana—they say that, too—currently available. What follows is a preliminary classification, done with no claims to vocational, or even avocational, expertise. Most decidedly not: this is a field in which all credentials, and especially impeccable ones, are suspect. To give your life, or any significant part of it, to the study of Sherlock Holmes is to defy reason.
Review, 3762 words
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