The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

1892 (published) ; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It was first published on October 14, 1892, although the individual stories were serialized in The Strand Magazine between June 1891-July 1892. The stories are not in chronological order, and the only characters common to all twelve are Holmes and Dr. Watson. The stories are related in first-person narrative from Watson’s point of view.

In general the stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes identify, and try to correct, social injustices. Holmes is portrayed as offering a new, fairer sense of justice. The stories were well received and boosted the subscriptions figures of The Strand Magazine, prompting Doyle to demand more money for his next set of stories. The first story, A Scandal in Bohemia, includes the character of Irene Adler, who, despite being featured only within this one story by Doyle, is a prominent character in modern Sherlock Holmes adaptations, generally as a love interest for Holmes. Doyle included four of the twelve stories from this collection in his twelve favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, picking The Adventure of the Speckled Band as his overall favorite.

One can only believe Doyle was a person born way before his time with the way he constructed his Sherlock Holmes character: Holmes, who most likely suffers from multiple mental or cognitive disorders, struggles with addiction in many forms, from chemical substances to obsessions of the mind.

At the time Doyle wrote them, Holmes' personality traits and esoteric behaviors were still not considered interesting enough to seriously study and research by medical or psychological experts, and his obvious addictions to chemical substances were not yet labeled illegal to possess and administer; however, mental illness, disorders, and addictions are certainly in the modern spotlight. So did Doyle realize the need to spotlight these aspects of the human psyche because he recognized their effects on individual people in his own life or did he recognize how they would affect future generations? 

With the intense societal focus on mental illness and addiction as of late, it does not strike one as interesting how prominent Holmes’ character is portrayed in modern media from novels to television to film. With Hugh Laurie’s take on the sleuth, treating diseases as criminals, and Johnny Lee Miller’s and Benjamin Cumberbatch’s more traditional take on the detective, modern writers have recognized the vehicle Doyle created to spotlight these modern day afflictions with the gusto needed to garner awareness and acceptance of these all-to-real human afflictions. 

Whether Doyle was simply assuaging his own demons or coping with the torments of others in his life, or if he attempted to predict the effects of mental illness and addiction for the benefit of the world in general, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ is a text book case of timeless literature.