{"id":19590,"date":"2024-05-08T20:07:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T00:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19590"},"modified":"2024-05-08T20:07:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T00:07:52","slug":"reading-report-a-study-in-scarlet-by-arthur-conan-doyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19590","title":{"rendered":"Reading report: ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ by Arthur Conan Doyle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cPoor devil!\u201d he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. \u201cWhat are you up to now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking for lodgings,\u201d I answered. \u201cTrying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a strange thing,\u201d remarked my companion; \u201cyou are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd who was the first?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1886,<\/strong> Arthur Conan Doyle was a struggling physician in the London suburb of Southsea (I\u2019ve always understood that he was an ophthalmologist, but his Wikipedia bio says he didn\u2019t turn to eye medicine until a few years later). Lacking patients, he devoted some of his abundant leisure time to writing, with some success. He sold a detective story called \u201cA Study in Scarlet\u201d to Beeton\u2019s Christmas Annual<\/em>, a publication remembered today almost solely for that story. It was a one-off; Doyle took the modest fee and went on to other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the story came to the attention of the editor of Lippincott\u2019s Magazine<\/em> in the US, and he commissioned a sequel. This would be \u201cThe Sign of the Four.\u201d Doyle\u2019s fictional detective, based to a large degree on the analytical methods of his medical teacher Dr. Joseph Bell, was off like a galloping horse \u2013 one that would eventually (in Doyle\u2019s view) run away with its owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having, as I mentioned before, started re-watching the excellent BBC Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, I decided it would be pleasant to re-read the stories \u2013 something I haven\u2019t done, I think, since the 1970s. I was right. I enjoyed \u201cA Study in Scarlet,\u201d which I read in this inexpensive Kindle collection<\/a> (they\u2019re all out of copyright now) immensely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with the story (it\u2019s never been properly dramatized, for reasons I can understand), it\u2019s narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, an army surgeon recently returned from Afghanistan, where he was wounded in action. He\u2019s living on his medical pension while recovering, and starts looking for a roommate. (See the extract above.) He soon finds himself living at 221B Baker Street with the eccentric Sherlock Holmes, whose profession is a mystery to him for a while. Finally, Holmes reveals that his frequent visitors, Lestrade and Gregson, are Scotland Yard detectives. He himself is the world\u2019s first \u201cConsulting Detective.\u201d When the policemen ask Holmes to come view a body found in an empty suburban house, Holmes asks Watson to come along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll leave it at that. The story is to get hold of, and easy to read. Doyle\u2019s prose is certainly Victorian, but not stuffily so. His characters are vivid; his dialogue is sharp, even after all these years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always rated \u201cA Study in Scarlet\u201d as one of the weaker stories, mainly because of the \u201cback story\u201d chapters, where the murderer \u2013 arrested (he uses the delightful Americanism \u201csnackled\u201d for it) after being lured in by Holmes, explains how and why he came to commit the terrible murders he is confessing. The story takes us back to the American Wild West and the Mormon state of Utah. This back story works better than I remember, though (although I have no time for Mormon theology) I still think the Mormons are portrayed pretty harshly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But taken all together, I found \u201cA Study in Scarlet\u201d more entertaining than I expected. And I have even better stories to look forward to, as I move into Doyle\u2019s stronger work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One caveat about this edition \u2013 it appears that, in scanning, the OCR software incorporated the page numbers into the text. So you\u2019ve got to ignore those when they show up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPoor devil!\u201d he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. \u201cWhat are you up to now?\u201d \u201cLooking for lodgings,\u201d I answered. \u201cTrying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a strange thing,\u201d remarked my companion; \u201cyou are the second man to-day … Continue reading Reading report: ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ by Arthur Conan Doyle<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5186,230,2564],"class_list":["post-19590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-a-study-in-scarlet","tag-arthur-conan-doyle","tag-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19590"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19592,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590\/revisions\/19592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}