Adam Frost and Jim Kynvin have developed several charts to display the numbers they have crunched from A.C. Doyle’s famous stories. Here are two of the charts. Another states Holmes has been adapted for film and TV more than any other fictional character, except Dracula. (via Prufrock)
I’ve always been curious about the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant.
Was Doyle the type to throw these titles in as jokes, do you think?
Yes, I definitely think he was.
Where his clients got their money would make another interesting chart. A few decades ago I combined a lazy summer with a single volume complete Sherlock Holmes, reading through nearly all the stories in a short period of time. Taken individually they stand alone as great stories. But taken in rapid succession, the formulaic nature began to stand out. One factor that struck me back then but didn’t make it into this analysis was that virtually every rich person encountered had made his fortune somewhere other than England (often South Africa Diamond Mines or USA Gold Mines) before returning to England to retire as a wealthy country gentleman. It also shows that the barriers to upward mobility in England were as great in the 1800’s as they are today since it obviously would have been preposterous to have a character who had made their fortune in England.
Good observation. An Englishman could achieve almost anything in the 19th Century (if he survived), but not at home.