The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes (2009) self-identifies as ‘Watson’s scrapbook’ (Adams,
2009). The original Sherlock Holmes stories (1887-1927) written by Arthur Conan Doyle,
were ‘Watson’s accounts of Holmes’s endeavours based on the notes he took during the
investigations and the evidence’ (Adams, 2009). Adam’s book compiles fictional evidence of
the well-known cases to add a new element to the famous stories. My project aims to do the
same by taking the stories and working them into a fictional news source. I adopted the title
‘Strand’ from the original publication of the short stories, ‘The Strand Magazine (1891–
1950), one of the first monthly magazines of light literature’ (Britannica). Adapting five of
the short stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891-1892) collection into
articles, was my homage to the creation and reproduction of the beloved characters and
stories as seen over the years, in movies, theatre, TV, poems, and books such as Moriarty
(2014) by Anthony Horowitz.
Vincent Starrett’s sonnet, 221B (1942) eclipses the notion of the timelessness of
Sherlock Holmes:
‘Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die;’ (Lines 1-2)
A Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London in 2015 similarly used the quote as
their tagline, ‘The man who never lived and will never die’. The phrase is a very poignant
way of summing up the endurance of Sherlock Holmes and the phenomena surrounding him.
Originally, I was unsure about whether to design and write the news articles in line with the
late nineteenth style of the time or modernise my design. However, ‘Holmes is an
extraordinary invention because he is more than a creature of his time.’ (Mount, 2010), hence
the popularity of modernised versions of the detective in BBC Sherlock (2010-present) and
1
Elementary (2012-present). Timelessness soon became the focal point for my project because
Sherlock Holmes is without time, ‘his genius and mystery can be transferred to any age.’
(Mount, 2010). As P.D. James famously stated, ‘he is of his age but, curiously, also of ours,
and this too may be part of his lasting appeal.’ (James, 2009). My aim with the project then
became to mix the contemporary with the past, as well as fiction with reality.
I adopted the Strand title to further embed these articles with the stories and history,
as an ‘in-world’ news source. This similarly links to a term called ‘personality’ whereby hints
of real events or people can be identified within fiction. In this case, it’s the fictional world of
Sherlock, the reality of where it was published, and small details I added recognisable to a
Sherlock fan. Doyle adopted this marketing tactic in A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), the public
could recognise the Bohemian King as being a reference to the Prince of Wales, but there was
still enough ambiguity to skew whether or not it was solely fictional, or based on the real
man.
I changed the term ‘Magazine’ to ‘Gazette’ to be more accommodating to the news
article form. I used ‘Gazette’ as it was a popular term at the time that ‘denoted a periodical
publication giving an account of current events.’ (Tréguer, 2016) It’s important to note the
difference between magazines (what will be referred to as periodicals; any publication
published at regular intervals) and newspapers. ‘Whereas newspapers are focused around a
very delimited notion of the present […] a periodical—despite also being predicated on the
notion of the moment—tends to provide apparatus that is oriented to its continuing relevance
in the future.’ (NCSE, quoted in King, p.4) Similarly, newspapers were published with a wide
readership in mind while some magazines, for example, Blackwood’s Magazine (1817-1980)
2
had a very specific, limiting readership in mind, that of the upper-class gentleman. Moreover,
there is a ‘vagueness of the term “newspaper” (King, p.5) because ‘“news” are events of
recent recurrence, [and] what is recent is relative’ (Mitchell, quoted in King, p.5) while ‘the
weekly periodical included time-sensitive content (however recent or old that “news” might
be) along with the kind of literary miscellany associated with magazines. (King, p.5). This
further contributes to the relevance and poignancy of the project because ‘many important
titles, such as […] the Strand Magazine extend beyond the boundaries of the nineteenth
century.’ (King, p.3) The Strand’s contents are timeless, and of the literary persuasion;
translating the stories into a newspaper form incorporates the concept of timelessness with
the current nature of news sources, and Sherlock Holmes is still, very much so, current.
The design of the project was inspired by one design from the late nineteenth century,
an 1891 clipping of a newspaper entitled The Standard (1827-1900) (Appendix A). I used
parchment paper as the background to give the appearance of an old, worn paper that marks
so many old copies of newspapers. I incorporated ‘Old English Text’ for the font title,
mimicking the use of it in The Standard and, similarly, created a bar underneath that includes
the issue number, date, and price as depicted. The date and issue numbers I used are the real
counterparts of each story’s original publication in The Strand. I subsequently added a
roundel in the bottom right-hand corner of each page, a detail The Strand utilised to write the
issue and volume number (Appendix B). The modernity aspect of the project is in the
language and voice the articles are written with. Furthermore, in regard to layout, the text is
justified, and each paragraph indented to mimic the form of a newspaper.
3
On a similar note, I wanted my project to be multifaceted as the stories are in their
countless adaptations. A Scandal in Bohemia and The Red-headed League (1891) are the first
two stories of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and so I chose those two to introduce
Sherlock Holmes as the unknown detective and work towards The Strand, and thus the
public, knowing of him, similar to how he gained popularity over time. Furthermore, I had to
choose cases that would be newsworthy to add to the realism, and wanted those with variety,
settling on; a blackmail case involving royalty in A Scandal in Bohemia, a known criminal
and bank robbery in The Red-headed League (1891), a murder in The Boscombe Valley
Mystery (1891), a triple homicide and racist organisation in The Five Orange Pips (1891),
and finally, an act of filicide in The Speckled Band (1892).
A few smaller details I added were the use of mistaking Sherlock in the first article as
‘Sherrinford’, a nod to the original name Doyle was going to use for the detective. I’ve used
Doyle’s name as the reporter’s name to pay homage to his history with Sherlock. Doyle grew
to hate his creation, in a letter to his mother he wrote, ‘I think of slaying Holmes […] &
winding him up for good & all. He takes my mind from better things.’ (Doyle, 1891). He
eventually did kill Holmes in The Final Problem, (1893) but resurrected the detective in The
Empty House (1903). The detail aims to represent that, no matter what world, Doyle was
always meant to write about, Sherlock Holmes.
4
Appendix
Appendix A
Sourced from British Library Newspapers (19th century British Newspapers)
The Standard (London, England), Monday, July 13, 1891; pg. [1]; Issue 20909. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900.
5
Bibliography
Adams, Guy, Thompson, Lee, The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, Andre Deutsch, 2009.
Conan Doyle, Arthur, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Race Point Publishing, 2013.
Gatiss, Mark, Moffat, Steven, BBC Sherlock, BBC, Hartswood Films, Series 1-4, 2010-present.
George Unwin, David H. Tucker and others, History of Publishing; The 19th century and the start of mass circulation, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2019, Web, Accessed on 27 April 2019. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Magazine-publishing#ref398343)
Horowitz, Anthony, Moriarty, Orion Books, 2015.
James, P.D, Talking about Detective Fiction, The Bodleian Library, 2009.
King, Andrew, Easley, Alexis, Morton, John, The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-century British Periodicals and Newspapers, Routledge, 2016, p.1-5.
Ritchie, Guy, Sherlock Holmes, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2009.
Lellenberg, Jon, Stashower, Foley, Charles, Arthur Conan Doyle: A life in letters, HarperCollins, 2008.
Mount, Harry, Why the riveting Sherlock Holmes stories have endured, Telegraph, 2010, Web, Accessed on 23 April 2019. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7911226/Why-the-riveting-Sherloc k-Holmes-stories-have-endured.html)
The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia, 2019, Web, Accessed on 23 April 2019. (https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Strand_Magazine)
The British Library Newspapers, The Standard, 1891, Web, Accessed on 27 April 2019, The Standard (London, England), Monday, July 13, 1891; pg. [1]; Issue 20909. British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900.
Tréguer, Pascal, The Curious History of the word ‘Gazette’, World Histories, 2016, Web, Accessed on 28 April 2019. (https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/21/gazette/)
Werner, Alex, Sherlock Holmes: The man who never lived and will never die, Museum of London, 2 March 2015 14:00.
Wilder, Billy, Private life of Sherlock Holmes, Metro Goldwyn.
7