In 2026 I plan to read all the Conan Doyle “Sherlock Holmes” works – 56 short stories and 4 novels (here’s why and how). If you haven’t already read it, Michael Green’s “undiscovered letter” from John Watson is fricking hilarious. I may also read various Holmes homages/pastiches etc. Who knows? (btw I’d recommend theSeven Per Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer where Watson has to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be treated by Sigmund Freud).
In February my target is to read all (or at very least most) of the 12 stories in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
I manage to have skipped number 14, the Adventure of the Cardboard Box, so will have to go back to that…
Published: February 1893
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this, because it’s one of those cases (few!) where Holmes gets it wrong, and the sexual and racial politics/comment on Empire are fascinating!
Best sentence(s):
Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.
My friend threw out the information in a very offhand way, but I saw that he cocked his eye at me to see if I had followed his reasoning.
“There was such earnestness, such despair, in her manner that her words arrested me, and I stood irresolute before the door.
I am willing to forget those which are passed if you will promise that there shall be no more in the future.’
“In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. Good-by; and, above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.”
*****
What do you think of my theory?”
“It is all surmise.”
“But at least it covers all the facts. When new facts come to our knowledge which cannot be covered by it, it will be time enough to reconsider it. We can do nothing more until we have a message from our friend at Norbury.”
*****
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt
*****
It is often so in such matches, and little Lucy is darker far than ever her father was. But dark or fair, she is my own dear little girlie, and her mother’s pet.”
****
If I had been less cautious I might have been more wise, but I was half crazy with fear that you should learn the truth.
*****
“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”
***
“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
HOLMES KNOWING HE MIGHT NOT KEEP HIMSELF HONEST< OR GET A BIG HEAD… Q. of intellectual humility
What was going on at the time?
Well, height of British Empire. Race and gender anxieties a-go-go. See also the “miscegenation” hoax of 1864, in support of the Copperheads… (Abe Lincoln blah blah)
Words I didn’t know:
| brier | any of a number of prickly scrambling shrubs, especially a wild rose. |
| wideawake | a soft felt hat with a low crown and wide brim. |
See also:
Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Yellow Face – Literary Theory and Criticism
Sherlock Holmes as an Anthropologist on JSTOR
Ronald R. Thomas 1994The Fingerprint of the Foreigner: Colonizing the Criminal Body in 1890s Detective Fiction and Criminal Anthropology.
ELH Volume 61, Number 3, Fall 1994 pp. 655-683
The Other Sherlock Holmes: Postcolonialism in Victorian Holmes and 21st Century Sherlock by Sarah E. Robinson, Bachelor of Arts A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the field of English Literatur
The Other Sherlock Holmes: Postcolonialism in Victorian Holmes and 21st Century Sherlock – ProQuest
marchudson.net 
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