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A Study in Scarlet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition in annual cover 1887 |
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| Author | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Sherlock Holmes |
| Genre(s) | Detective, Crime, Mystery, Novel |
| Publisher | Ward Lock & Co |
| Publication date | 1887 in annual (1888 in book form) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) and Audio book |
| ISBN | NA |
A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in 1887. It is significant as the first story to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes, who would later go on to become one of the most famous and iconic literary detective characters, with long-lasting interest and appeal.
Conan Doyle wrote the novel at the age of 27. A general practice doctor in Southsea, England, he had already published short stories in several magazines of the day, such as the periodical London Society. The story was originally titled A Tangled Skein, and was eventually published by Ward Lock & Co. in Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887, after many rejections. The author received £25 in return for the full rights (although Conan Doyle had pressed for a royalty instead). The novel was produced in book form in July 1888, published by Ward, Lock & Co. This book was illustrated by Arthur Conan Doyle's father, Charles Doyle. A second edition appeared the following year and contained illustrations by George Hutchinson, and J. B. Lippincott Co. published the first American edition in 1890. Numerous further editions, translations and dramatisations have appeared since.
The story, and its main character, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only ten copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887 are known to exist now and they have considerable value. Although Doyle wrote fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon.
The novel was followed by The Sign of Four, published in 1890.
Contents |
The novel is split into two quite separate halves. The first is titled Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department. This part is told in first person by Holmes' friend Doctor John H. Watson and describes his introduction in 1881 to Sherlock Holmes through a mutual friend and the first mystery in which he followed Holmes' investigations. The mystery revolves around a corpse found at a derelict house in Brixton, England with the word "RACHE" scrawled in blood on the wall beside the body.
Holmes firmly resolves to solve the case despite the fact that he won't be given any credit of it. For this purpose, he makes up a plan using a wedding ring that had been lost at the crime scene. After placing an ad in the newspaper, asking for the ring owner, Holmes is visited by an old woman who claims the ring. Holmes follows "her" (it turns out to be a man in disguise) but the disguised man manages to escape.
Minutes later, Holmes is visited by one of the police detectives assigned to the case, who claims that the case has been solved and the murderer is now jailed. After the detective finishes explaining how he solved the case, a second police detective (Lestrade) arrives to announce that there has been a second murder - it is clear that the man the police have arrested is innocent. The police are now completely at a loss - both detectives have arrived at dead ends.
By way of reply, Holmes announces that he himself has solved the murder and will shortly arrest the killer. Pretending to be packing his bags for a journey, he asks the waiting cab driver to come and assist him with his luggage. As soon as the cab driver appears in his room, however, Holmes takes out his handcuffs and arrests the driver. Proudly he says, "Gentlemen... Let me introduce you to Mr Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber and of Joseph Strangerson.".
The second half of the story is called The Country of the Saints and jumps to the United States of America and the Mormon community, and incorporating a depiction of the Danites, including an appearance by Brigham Young in a somewhat villainous context. It is told in a third person narrative style, with an omniscient narrator, before returning in the last two chapters to Watson's account of Holmes' investigation, and then Holmes' own explanation of his solution. In these two chapters the relationship between the two halves of the novel becomes apparent. The motive for the crime is essentially one of lost love and revenge.
According to a 1994 Salt Lake City newspaper article, when Doyle was asked about his depiction of the Latter Day Saints' organization as being steeped in kidnapping, murder and enslavement, he said, "all I said about the Danite Band and the murders is historical so I cannot withdraw that". However, Doyle's daughter has stated, "You know, father would be the first to admit that his first Sherlock Holmes novel was full of errors about the Mormons." Years after Doyle's death, Levi Edgar Young, a descendant of Brigham Young, and a Mormon general authority, claimed that Doyle had privately apologized. [1].
- It is strange that the police apparently never questioned the owner of the Brixton house, where the first murder happened. The door was intact, so whoever murdered Drebber had to have a key, for which the owner would have been the obvious candidate. This would have led the police (or Holmes, who chose to ignore the clue as well) quickly on to the right track.
- It also does not follow that Jefferson Hope shows no suspicion upon having his cab summoned to 221B Baker Street, after his earlier ploy of having sent a friend disguised as an old woman to the same address. It seems unlikely that he would have forgotten the address so quickly after having seen the advertisement about the gold ring in the paper on the previous day.
- The book violates what would later become one of the cardinal rules of detective fiction and which provides much of the fun of reading such books - namely, that the author must provide enough prior clues to let an intelligent and perceptive reader solve the mystery for him/herself. There is no way whatsoever for a reader to do that here. The very first time that the reader hears the name "Jefferson Hope" is when Holmes produces him as the murderer. (The most the reader could know before is that there was an American involved, and only then if the reader was familiar with the song "The Star-Spangled Banner.") Nor is there in the smallest prior hint that Mormons are in any way involved. Certainly, nothing found in possession of the two murdered men gives any hint of their Mormon background - in fact, Doyle positively misleads the reader, since "Decameron" is anything but recommended reading material for Latter Day Saints. However, it should be noted that these rules of the detective genre did not yet exist, and Doyle's book was among the pioneering works laying the very foundations of that genre.
- The Avenging Angels who terrorize the Ferriers do indeed seem to have divine powers. At least they manage to deliver their daily warnings in a way that borders on the supernatural. Once they manage to place it in John's bedroom after he locks all the doors and windows, and another time he waits up inside his house all night for them, sees and hears nothing, and yet finds the warning painted on his front door.
There are several minor inconsistencies in the story which are incompatible with later Sherlock Holmes stories. Dr Watson provides a short autobiography of himself at the start. In this he is invalided out of the army after being wounded in the shoulder in the Second Afghan War at the Battle of Maiwand. In later stories, his wound has moved to his leg.
In this book, Holmes is presented as a single-minded person who has no interests whatsoever except for what directly serves his work as a detective, and who indeed actively tries to forget any irrelevant piece of knowledge which came inadvertently to his attention. While this works in the first book, it would have made Holmes an unutterably boring character had Doyle persisted in it for the rest of the series (which would then hardly have had the same amount of popularity).
In later books and stories Holmes is depicted, to the complete contrary, as a multifaceted intellectual with an intensive interest in and deep knowledge of numerous subjects having nothing to do with his detective work, such as music, art, philosophy and bee-keeping, and he keeps writing articles and monographs in numerous fields.
Doyle paid ambiguous tribute to the influence of Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq by having Holmes denounce them as "a very inferior fellow" and "a miserable bungler", respectively.
In his Naked is the Best Disguise, Samuel Rosenberg notes the similarity between Jefferson Hope's tracking of Enoch Drebber and a sequence in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Several other associations between Doyle and Joyce are also listed in Rosenberg's book.
The British fantasy and comic book writer Neil Gaiman adapted this story to the universe of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It is titled A Study In Emerald and is modeled with a parallel structure.
As the first Sherlock Holmes story published, it was fittingly the first one to be adapted to the screen. In 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle authorized a silent film be produced by G. B. Samuelson. Holmes was played by James Bragington, an accountant who had never before (and evidently never after) worked as an actor. He was hired for his resemblance to Holmes as presented in the sketches originally published with the story. [2] Unfortunately, as early silent films were made with film which itself was made with poor materials and film archiving was rare, this is now a lost film. The success of this film allowed for a second version to be produced that same year by Francis Ford, which has also been lost.
It has been adapted many times, although frequently only the portions of the first section of the book in which Holmes and Watson's relationship is established are used. The Ron Howard/H. Marion Crawford television series used that section of the book as the basis for the episode "The Case of the Cunningham Inheritance". The John Gielgud/Ralph Richardson radio series combined it with details from "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" to create its "origin story". The book has rarely been adapted in full, notable instances being in the Peter Cushing/Nigel Stock television series, as an episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater, by Bert Coules for the first project starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson and, in 2007 by M. J. Elliott for the American radio series The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A surprisingly faithful animated version of the tale with Peter O'Toole voicing Holmes was produced in 1984 by Burbank Films and helmed by frequent Disney animator Alex Nicholas.
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| Novels | A Study in Scarlet · The Sign of the Four · The Hound of the Baskervilles · The Valley of Fear |  |
| Short story collections | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes · The Return of Sherlock Holmes · His Last Bow · The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes | |
| Main characters | Irene Adler · Inspector Bradstreet · Tobias Gregson · Mycroft Holmes · Sherlock Holmes · Stanley Hopkins · Inspector Lestrade · Sebastian Moran · Professor Moriarty · Mary Morstan · Doctor Watson | |
| Related topics | Canon of Sherlock Holmes · 221B Baker Street · Sherlockiana | |
- A Study in Scarlet, available at Project Gutenberg.
- A Study In Scarletis also a local Progressive/Rock band of Memphis, Tn.