Sherlock Holmes, a study in sources

> Craftsman or copyist? Genius or journeyman? Artist or artisan? Of these, what was Conan Doyle? Who can explain the phenomenon which makes Sherlock Holmes the instantly recognizable stock figure, probably the only such stereotype and standby in late Victorian and early twentieth-century fiction? Durable dated Holmes, whose career is now a century old (and he himself better than a century and a quarter according to his supporters) is as crisply readable and as much read as ever. If this is not literature, it is certainly durable craftsmanship, such that while Conan Doyle's other works fade, new editions of Sherlock Holmes, and Holmeses who never knew Conan Doyle, roll steadily from the presses. Such durability demands explanation. >Part of the method of the archaeologist is the examination of the odd bricks that remain to his finding, and the drawing out of them such facts as can be discovered or induced about their use in the original building. Such inductive methods may well be used in the study of authorial method. So the present study proposes to look at a few of the Victorian bricks in the Sherlock Holmes structure: the personal names, chiefly surnames, with which Conan Doyle christened his cast. >The basic question which it undertook to tackle was this: Whence come the names in the Sherlock Holmes tales? Were they chosen at random, or by what means? By the time a couple score of names had been located in sources not only which would have been available to Doyle, but which he could hardly have overlooked, a hypothesis could then be formed: that Doyle obtained and used names which he found available to him in current sources of several kinds; that in many cases these names are used because of connotations which would have been evident to at least some readers; and that plot incidents, characteristics of individuals, and names, taken from current sources or Doyle's retrospective reading, were carefully reworked, pieced, and joined, into his own constructions. >Doyle's skill as a writer became more evident as the work progressed, and one can only marvel at the wide range of his activities and interests, his phenomenal memory for all he had read, seen, and encountered, and his facility in combining, reusing, and making vital the incidents and characters under his pen. >This study of Conan Doyle is therefore less a study of architecture and design than an archaeological dig for shards and bricks. This does not make a restoration project, or even enable an architect's sketch to be redrawn; but it does give a great appreciation of the care, energy, and effort of the builder, of the skill with which the bricks were fitted together and the mortar spread and scribed between them. >>[excerpts from Introduction]