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The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-Six Short Stories Complete [2-Volume Set, Illustrated with Drawings]

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The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by William Baring-Gould is the best read i've ever had the pleasure of doing!!!!! A. I'm the 3rd generation to have these books because my papa's dad got them for my papa as a b-day present & then he'll give them to me when i go to college. B. Dont read the intro it's 104 pgs long i skipped to a short story like my papa said to get the feel for it then read from the beginning to the end there are II thick 688pg. volume I & 824pg. volume II I can't tell you how much I love stories like this & the best part is im a 12 yr. old MINOR!!!!! NOW PLEASE MAKE BASIL RATHBONE HAPPY & BUY 'The Annotated Sherlock Holmes' you wont regret it!!!!!!.....

`The Annotated Sherlock Holmes' by William S Baring-Gould is easily one of the top two or three best examples of annotated popular literature, as good as, and possibly even better than the most famous annotation efforts by Martin Gardner on the major works of Lewis Carroll.

It is not immediately evident to me that the works of Sherlock Holmes need annotation. Unlike the works of Carroll, there are very few linguistic tricks or cleverly veiled allusions to his English contemporaries. On the other hand, over the course of the last 120 years, there has been an enormous body of work dedicated to the exegesis of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. There has been probably more of this activity for works of popular fiction than for the next five cases put together. To my knowledge, there is virtually no similar activity on the mystery novels of, for example, either Agatha Christie or the mystery stories of Edgar Alan Poe, to take two authors who bracket Conan Doyle's' stories in time.

It is worth the effort to determine what it is which makes the Sherlock Holmes stories so popular. One of the easiest ways is to compare Holmes to the heroes of his greatest modern imitators, the lead characters of the CSI series, most especially Gil Grissom of the original CSI show, based in Las Vegas. Both characters are `amateur' scientists in that they apply scientific disciplines to solving crimes, and actually do original work in their respective sciences, in spite of the fact that their primary avocation is `consulting detective'. In Holmes case, this was a profession he invents out of whole cloth. In the case of Grissom and his colleagues, the `consulting detective' profession has become institutionalized in the discipline of forensics, where the crime scene investigators deal with things which are beyond the ken of the average detective.

There is an eerie similarity between Holmes and Grissom in that both are very detached from many normal human interactions. Holmes rationalizes this with his theory of the mind as an attic that can hold only so much information. To add new things, old things must be discarded. For this reason, Holmes is blissfully ignorant of the planets in the solar system, but he is an expert on over 100 different types of tobacco ash. Similarly, Grissom is very poor at office politics or romantic relations in favor of his dedication to the application of entomology (study of insects) to forensics, a subject on which he is a nationally recognized authority.

It should be no surprise if the popularity of Sherlock Holmes stories may actually be gaining in popularity, as the CSI shows go a long way to validating many of the scientific principles and techniques used by Holmes. The most famous may be his search for a very sensitive reagent for the detection of blood residues. This is what Holmes is doing when he and Dr. John Watson meet for the first time in the chemical laboratory of `Barts' (St. Bartholomew's Hospital). Holmes explanation of why such a reagent is important in the investigation of crime is verified on practically every episode of CSI, whether it be in Las Vegas, Miami, or New York City. So, not only are we taken by the fact that Conan Doyle had such a good grasp of criminal investigation, but that he was so astute as to realize that such a reagent was possible.

Holmes elevates intellectual competence almost to a level of magic, using that old chestnut that if the difference in the level of technology between two parties in an encounter is great enough, that higher technology becomes indistinguishable from magic. One major difference between Holmes and Grissom is that Holmes has no modesty about his abilities, demonstrated when he belittles' the deductive powers of Edgar Alan Poe's hero in his famous story, `Murders in the Rue Morgue'.

The value of this annotation also increases over time, as the world of Sherlock Holmes is rapidly slipping away from us. These stories were written when the sun literally never set on the great British Empire, stretching across Canada, hundreds of Pacific Islands, Hong Kong, southeast Asia, much of Africa, and that greatest `Jewel in the Crown', India, where Dr. Watson himself served as a surgeon in the British Army in India. Among other things, that meant that if anything could be found in the world at all, it could be found in London. London's scientific and intellectual centers were among the greatest in the world, so it should be no surprise that the world's greatest `consulting detective' should live in London. In many ways, Sherlock Holmes is a far more believable character than his later fictional colleague, James Bond, since England's fortunes as a mover and shaker on the world stage had fallen far between 1880 and 1950.

So, our pleasure is greatly enhanced by being given copious notes on Holmes' London as well as the science of the day. Also very satisfying are the notes that correlate events in various stories. The whole collection is laid out by the fictional chronological order of Holmes' cases.

The greatness of Holmes' character can be seen in the fact that he is probably the model for over half of the great fictional detectives of the last 100 years. While I am not a great fan of detective fiction, I am certain he was the inspiration for both Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Dorothy Sayers' detective, Lord Peter Whimsey. In fact, the greatness of Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's detective writing may be in the fact that they escape the Sherlock Holmes prototype and create a new style of private detective.

This work of annotation is so good, I am hard pressed to appreciate how anyone can fully enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes without these notes. As with the commentary track on better DVD releases of movies, the notes literally double or more than double the pleasure and rereadability of the works.

Very highly recommended.

These are two huge hardcover volumes with all of the Homes material printed in them. There are also copious pages of annotations. The notes cover such material as the dates for the events in the mysteries, the probable contents of Holmes' library, the number of Watson's marriages, the geography of London, certain political events and historical figures, and so forth. The depth and breadth of the annotations is better than any I have ever seen done for any book. The original illustrations are also reprinted. The books are a fascinating read, even for a non obsessed fan such as myself. A very expensive but worthwhile purchase. Highly recommended.

Two splendid volumes, hardbacks measuring 9x10 inches -- The first volume 688 pages plus 3 unnumbered pages at the end, the second volume 824 pages, "containing the four novels and the fifty-six short stories complete".

What you should know before you start:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are fictitional characters. You thought so, I thought so, but reading the footnotes . . . much effort is given, for example, to dating the stories. The weather, for example, is examined in actual records of the time. Errors may be attributed to Dr. Watson, to the typesetter trying to read Watson's handwriting. And so forth.

The meaning of the word "canon." Here is a portion from Wikipedia's definition.
". . . . The term was first used in the context of fiction to refer to the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to distinguish those works from subsequent pastiches by other authors." That is, "the canon" refers not to some unknown biblical aspect but to the real deal as written by Arthur Conan Doyle, though Sherlock Holmes in some footnotes here by Sherlockian scholars is referred to as "the Master."

The meaning of the word "pastiche." Here is a portion from Wikipedia's definition.
"A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre that is a "hodge-podge" or an imitation."
Thus the 1976 film, "The Seven Percent Solution" [7% the strength of the cocaine solution Holmes injects, to Watson's dismay] is a pastiche, a knockoff based on THE CANON.

The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle carried me along. The annotations: footnotes, photographs, drawings and maps became a source of fascination. Even to the point of learning heraldic terms, as the Sherlockians had no qualms about digging up such items, or for that matter making them up.

I'll close with something I didn't know. Conan Doyle wrote other fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Scotland of parents of Irish ancestry. More on Wikipedia.

I recommend this annotated Sherlock Holmes, for there has been a great amount of time between the writing of this work and today, and the notes are quite useful.