“When one has your disposition, and is poor, one may either become a famous thief or a great detective. Choose.” -Monsieur Lecoq

http://members.aol.com/MG4273/classics.htm
for my own personal reference- mystery writers and lit- pulp fiction, classics, novels




You can order these off the Baker Street Irregulars website!

I have recently read the American story of NICK CARTER, written shortly after first publishing of Sherlock Holmes. This dime novel parrot plagerizes the stories of our great hero Holmes, and is a weak copy at that. The hero is reminicent of Holmes and so are the plots of his detective adventures. I cannot believe this dime novel was so popular here in America when a far superior version was existing; possibly Americans were not recieving copies of Holmes at the time? I am very curious to how the writers of Nick Carter got away with his existence and how his readers could explain their interest in such a 2 Dimensional charater and plot progression. Horrible, Awful! It is interesting to see how quickly these detective stories popped up after Holmes and that they were so popular.

Links
http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/acdsfairies.htm

THE CANON (I've Checked the ones I've read so far)


A Study in Scarlet +
The Sign of Four
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A Scandal in Bohemia +
The Red-headed League +
A Case of Identity +
The Boscombe Valley Mystery +
The Five Orange Pips +
The Man with the Twisted Lip +
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle +
The Adventure of the Speckled Band +
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb +
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor +
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet +
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches +
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Silver Blaze +
The Yellow Face +
The Stock-broker's Clerk +
The "Gloria Scott" +
The Musgrave Ritual +
The Reigate Puzzle
The Crooked Man
The Resident Patient +
The Greek Interpreter
The Naval Treaty
The Final Problem
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Empty House
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
The Adventure of the Priory School
The Adventure of Black Peter
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
The Adventure of the Three Students
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
The Adventure of the Second Stain
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Valley of Fear
His Last Bow
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge +
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box +
The Adventure of the Red Circle
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
The Disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
His Last Bow
The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
The Adventure of the Three Gables
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
The Problem of Thor Bridge
The Adventure of the Creeping Man +
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman

Predecessors and Followers:

Role in the history of the detective story
A popular misconception is that the Sherlock Holmes stories gave rise to the entire genre of detective fiction. In fact, the Holmes character and his modus operandi were inspired by two predecessors, C. Auguste Dupin and Monsieur Lecoq and their technique for solving crime. Created by Edgar Allan Poe and Émile Gaboriau respectively, they were both investigators to whom even Holmes himself alluded. Many fictional sleuths have imitated Holmes' logical methods and followed in his footsteps, in various ways. Some of the more popular to continue Holmes' legacy include Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Bobby Goren, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Perry Mason, Columbo, Dick Tracy, Adrian Monk, the children's book series Encyclopedia Brown, and even the comic book hero Batman. The long running Japanese manga and anime Detective Conan (released as Case Closed in English due to copyright issues) was also heavily influenced by Sherlock Holmes, with the main character himself taking after Holmes' and giving himself a nickname based on Sir Arthur's middle name.

QUOTES:

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know." ("The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle")
"The air of London is sweeter for my presence." ("The Final Problem")
"My brain has always governed my heart." ("The Sign of Four")
"Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment." ("The Sign of Four")
"A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her." ("The Musgrave Ritual")
"When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. . . A married woman grabs at her baby - an unmarried one reaches for her jewel box." ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." ("The Boscombe Valley Mystery")
"You can...never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant." ("The Sign of Four")
"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last." ("The Adventure of the Red Circle")
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ("The Adventure of The Blanched Soldier")
"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule." ("The Sign of Four")
"...when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ("The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet")

Deductive Reasoning:

is the kind of reasoning in which the conclusion is necessitated by, or reached from, previously known facts (the premises). If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. This is distinguished from abductive and inductive reasoning, where the premises may predict a high probability of the conclusion, but do not ensure that the conclusion is true.
Deductive reasoning is dependent on its premises. That is, a false premise can possibly lead to a false result, and inconclusive premises will also yield an inconclusive conclusion. Given, false premises are included in our list of logical fallacies.
Ex:
Since Socrates is a man,
and since all men are mortal,
Socrates is mortal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Fragile Things; "A Study in Emerald", by Neil Gaiman

Shadows Over Bakerstreet, edited by Michael Reaves, John Pelan

Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes, Ronald A. Knox

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allen Poe

The Lerouge Affair, by Emile Gaboriau

What about Sherlock Holmes inspires such love and curiosity, what keeps readers up night after night, reading like an addiction? Where did this creature come from, this perfect little detective who takes our hearts and experiments with them in his chemical lab. We must know, all of us, what the answer is. Here are some topics that could be worth a semester of thought and research:

Rules of Deduction - methods of detective work

Holmes interpereted in the Modern World

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, eclipsed by his masterpiece

The Lovable Mr. Holmes - Why such fantastic character

The Writing Style of the Stories of Sherlock Holmes

Holmes in Other Literatures