Sherlock Holmes: Victorian Sleuth to Modern Hero

Review: Sherlock Holmes: Victorian Sleuth to Modern Hero is a collection of papers from the 1994 Conference of the Baker Street Breakfast Club at Bennington, Vermont. That sounds terribly academic and inaccessible. In fact the contents are wonderfully varied and readable.

You'll find familiar Sherlockian names here, like Philip K. Wilson and Patrick Campbell, alongside Nicholas Meyer and Edward B. Hanna, best-selling novelists who have enlarged on the Holmes saga, and a host of specialists in English literature and social history. All write so engagingly that it must be a pleasure to be taught by them.

Subjects range from Holmes's work-ethic and Holmes as the archetypal hero to the influence of Sherlock Holmes on Star Trek: the Next Generation and the reasons why no movie has yet measured up to the true Sherlock Holmes.

It's a delightful, stimulating collection, and I recommend it to all who are interested in the phenomenon that is Sherlock Holmes.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 170, 1997]