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My Dear Holmes: A Study in Sherlock
Book by Brend, Gavin
- GenresNonfiction
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 22, 2011
This is a fantastic little book. Written decades and decades ago, it's a fascinating example of the author's love for Sherlock Holmes and his adventures; extreme and intense scholarly study of the canon; and a tour de force of brain thrashing and text/date/fact wrangling in pursuit of 'The Great Game' ie. treating Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson as real historical figures, and presenting a coherent timeline of their cases.
That people play this game is a tribute the compelling and beloved characters that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created. They're so much larger than life, and fiction, that they seem real. But it does make me smile at, and at the same time deeply admire, the lengths to which Holmes scholars will go to 'make things fit'. Gavin Brend has done an outstanding and very readable job of assigning cases to years and filling in gaps between cases. It's a triumph of detective work in itself, picking through textual clues and cross referencing them. His own writing style is humorous and a little quaint in places, but this book is 60 years old, so his voice is bound to be different to that of someone approaching the topic now.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this small volume. But I'm left thinking how much easier life would have been - although far, far less challenging - for Holmes' students if Sir Arthur had worked with a rigorous content and continuity editor throughout the years he was writing about the Great Detective.
But maybe it's better this way, better that Sir Arthur often completely forgot what he'd written in an earlier story, and frequently perpetrated gaffes with dates, times, places... because playing The Great Game must have brought almost as much pleasure to people as reading the stories themselves does. :)
That people play this game is a tribute the compelling and beloved characters that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created. They're so much larger than life, and fiction, that they seem real. But it does make me smile at, and at the same time deeply admire, the lengths to which Holmes scholars will go to 'make things fit'. Gavin Brend has done an outstanding and very readable job of assigning cases to years and filling in gaps between cases. It's a triumph of detective work in itself, picking through textual clues and cross referencing them. His own writing style is humorous and a little quaint in places, but this book is 60 years old, so his voice is bound to be different to that of someone approaching the topic now.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this small volume. But I'm left thinking how much easier life would have been - although far, far less challenging - for Holmes' students if Sir Arthur had worked with a rigorous content and continuity editor throughout the years he was writing about the Great Detective.
But maybe it's better this way, better that Sir Arthur often completely forgot what he'd written in an earlier story, and frequently perpetrated gaffes with dates, times, places... because playing The Great Game must have brought almost as much pleasure to people as reading the stories themselves does. :)
May 5, 2022
Written in 1951 and given to me by an older member of the Sherlock Holmes society, this book is pure and unadulterated vintage-Holmes-enthusiast heaven. The book falls within the tradition of "The Great Game", that is, treating Holmes and Watson as though they were historical figures and trying to resolve/clarify points from the original stories that seem contradictory. In essence, My Dear Holmes is a biography of the Great Detective's life drawn entirely from the Conan and/or deduced on the basis of actual evidence in the stories. Unlike a lot of other books in the genre, it doesn't stray from the original stories or incorporate fanciful theories (such as whether Mr. Holmes and Mrs. Norton née Adler ever met again). For that reason, I would rank this book way above a lot of other offerings in "The Great Game". I also love that it's full of little tidbits of information concerning everyday life in the Victorian era, showing clearly the amoutn of research and dedication put into the book. Highly recommended for the fanatic Holmes enthusiast.
February 24, 2018
Holmesian chronology porn. For true obsessives only.
February 18, 2017
This is for dedicated fans only.
This is the first Sherlock Holmes biography I have succeeded in finishing, after two others which I could not manage to complete. The superiority of My Dear Holmes is, however, almost entirely relative.
The greater part of this book is barely even a biography at all. The author tries to stick very close to the canon or what is implied by it; look elsewhere for accounts of Holmes's childhood, or his retirement, or fanciful reunions with Irene Adler.
Most of the content consists of the author essentially building a chronology of the canonical Holmes cases, and weighing his evidence and arguments as he goes along. I have some sympathy with this kind of activity. As a child I assembled lengthy chronologies for various comic book characters, which was a similar exercise. But ultimately it's an exercise in putting imaginary square pegs into imaginary round holes; in all of these fictions, Holmes included, the internal continuity is simply inconsistent and trying to reason a better one into being is inherently silly.
The same may be said for the entire field of "Sherlockian studies," however, and with that caveat My Dear Holmes is a decent minor essay. Where the author engages in actual invention, rather than just sorting—such as Holmes's college career or the story of Watson's marriages—it becomes genuinely entertaining. The rest can grow tedious, but the whole work is brief enough that I found my way through.
This is the first Sherlock Holmes biography I have succeeded in finishing, after two others which I could not manage to complete. The superiority of My Dear Holmes is, however, almost entirely relative.
The greater part of this book is barely even a biography at all. The author tries to stick very close to the canon or what is implied by it; look elsewhere for accounts of Holmes's childhood, or his retirement, or fanciful reunions with Irene Adler.
Most of the content consists of the author essentially building a chronology of the canonical Holmes cases, and weighing his evidence and arguments as he goes along. I have some sympathy with this kind of activity. As a child I assembled lengthy chronologies for various comic book characters, which was a similar exercise. But ultimately it's an exercise in putting imaginary square pegs into imaginary round holes; in all of these fictions, Holmes included, the internal continuity is simply inconsistent and trying to reason a better one into being is inherently silly.
The same may be said for the entire field of "Sherlockian studies," however, and with that caveat My Dear Holmes is a decent minor essay. Where the author engages in actual invention, rather than just sorting—such as Holmes's college career or the story of Watson's marriages—it becomes genuinely entertaining. The rest can grow tedious, but the whole work is brief enough that I found my way through.
July 25, 2015
Escrito em 1951, "My Dear Holmes - A Study In Sherlock" é um livro só para fanáticos, e um que tinha em lista de espera para quando acabasse a releitura de todo o cânone Sherlockiano.
Gavin Brend tenta escrever uma biografia completa de Holmes, partindo do princípio óbvio que Holmes e Watson são personagens reais (Conan Doyle nunca é sequer mencionado em todo o livro). Esta não é uma tarefa fácil - Doyle nunca se preocupou muito com a consistência das histórias, misturando datas, casos, pondo Watson ora a viver em Baker Street, ora casado e a viver fora... Daí que o trabalho de Brend para construir uma biografia consistente seja muitas vezes interessante pelas soluções imaginativas que encontra. É um verdadeiro e apropriado trabalho de dedução - e, embora não o pareça numa biografia, um trabalho de imenso humor.
Definitivamente recomendado a quem conhecer bem a obra de Doyle.
Gavin Brend tenta escrever uma biografia completa de Holmes, partindo do princípio óbvio que Holmes e Watson são personagens reais (Conan Doyle nunca é sequer mencionado em todo o livro). Esta não é uma tarefa fácil - Doyle nunca se preocupou muito com a consistência das histórias, misturando datas, casos, pondo Watson ora a viver em Baker Street, ora casado e a viver fora... Daí que o trabalho de Brend para construir uma biografia consistente seja muitas vezes interessante pelas soluções imaginativas que encontra. É um verdadeiro e apropriado trabalho de dedução - e, embora não o pareça numa biografia, um trabalho de imenso humor.
Definitivamente recomendado a quem conhecer bem a obra de Doyle.
April 23, 2025
For the Holmes-nut (a group in which I would count myself, with a personal library of well over 100 Holmes and related titles, plus lots of films, radio recordings, and other paraphernalia), this may be an essential book. But for the general reader, or even the casual reader of Doyle's detective stories, this probably would be a boring read. Hence my low rating (the Sherlockian would already know the value of this work). Even for the lover of Holmes, there are better bio's written later by other authors (e.g., Michael Harrison's, I, Sherlock Holmes).
September 1, 2014
too much arguments over trivia
August 25, 2016
an excellent read!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews