Sherlock Holmes is a fictional consulting detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introduced in the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet and appearing across four novels and fifty-six short stories narrated largely by his friend and chronicler Dr. John Watson. Holmes is famed for an almost superhuman capacity for observation, deduction and forensic reasoning, which he applies to solve crimes the official police cannot, working from his rooms at 221B Baker Street in Victorian London. He is characterized by an eccentric, sometimes cold private temperament, a fondness for chemistry and disguise, and a rigorous, quasi-scientific method of inference that made him one of the most widely recognized and imitated characters in world literature, inspiring the entire modern genre of the detective story. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Narrative RoleSourced to the subject's own accountProtagonist and titular detective, the series' recurring investigative hero 1 Defining TraitSourced to the subject's own accountNear-superhuman power of observation and deductive reasoning applied to crime 1 Narrative role (class)Sourced to the subject's own account Connections
Character In
Source Sherlock Holmes (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Sources
1. Sherlock Holmes (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a consulting detective in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic.
Origins and inspiration section
Conan Doyle repeatedly said that Holmes was inspired by the real-life figure of Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, whom Conan Doyle met in 1877 and had worked for as a clerk.
- Character In: A Study in Scarlet
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
Was Sherlock Holmes based on a real person?
Largely yes: Conan Doyle said Holmes was inspired by Joseph Bell, an Edinburgh surgeon he worked for as a clerk.
Yes, largely. Arthur Conan Doyle repeatedly said Holmes was inspired by Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh whom Doyle had worked for as a clerk starting in 1877. Bell was noted, like Holmes, for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations, though Bell himself downplayed the connection, telling Doyle "You are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it." Sir Henry Littlejohn, Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, is also cited as an inspiration.
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