The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Analysis

There are a lot of things in these twelve stories that seem like they should be symbols. After all, when Julia Stoner's dying words are, "It was the band! The speckled band!" (Band.50), you'd be fo...

You may have read in our "Character Analysis" of Sherlock Holmes that we asked if Holmes might have been a real guy (the answer is no, by the way). We pointed out that Conan Doyle is always making...

Watson, the narrator, is definitely a main character in these stories. So why don't we call him a "Central Narrator"? Because Watson is telling his own story, sure, but only insofar as that story r...

We don't want to make too many assumptions here, but – it's Sherlock Holmes. In other words, definitely a mystery. The focus of each story is on solving a central problem, and that means ther...

So, a mystery story that is all clues and no description would be like a laundry list: Discovered, (1) one beryl coronet missing (3) three beryls, in the (2) two hands of (1) one Arthur Holder. No...

OK, we know, that sounds like a copout: what the heck kind of a style is "variable"? But bear with us for a second. Here's our logic: Watson is certainly the central narrator of the Holmes stories,...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is actually not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first publication featuring our favorite private consulting detective. Nope, the novels A Study in Scarlet (1888) and The...

Here's a word that we love to use at Shmoop when we're talking about the ends of things: the dénouement, the moment in a story when all of the plot's loose ends are resolved and all mysteries...

These stories are over a hundred years old now, so a lot of the references have become pretty obscure, especially to types of technology we no longer use (like, we here at Shmoop definitely had to...

Here at Shmoop, we usually analyze a novel (or a single short story) in terms of its complication and then resolution. The characters go on some kind of journey, they progress, crisis comes, we...

Here at Shmoop, we usually analyze a novel (or a single short story) in terms of its complication and then resolution. The characters go on some kind of journey, they progress, crisis comes, we a...

Here at Shmoop, we usually analyze a novel (or a single short story) in terms of its complication and then resolution. The characters go on some kind of journey, they progress, crisis comes, we al...

In spite of the fact that we associate Holmes so strongly with London, the Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet was actually much more popular in the United States than it was in England. In fact, it's...

Considering they deal with elopement, opium dens, and even murderers, Sherlock Holmes tales are pretty darn pure – at least, in sexual terms. Not only is the Great Detective himself practical...

A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Bohemia.1.3; Valley.22)James Boswell, chronicler of the life of Samuel Johnson (Bohemia.1.37)Gustave Flaubert, French author (League.216)George Sand, Fre...