Has anyone ever read Sherlock Holmes, a friend of mine is doing an essay on:
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was popular in Edwardian and Victorian society for many reasons. What in your opinion makes the stories exciting and successful.

Can anyone help?

Thanks, Lottie

It is a long time since I read them, but I alwayd enjoyed trying to work out what Holmes saw and deduced that other people didnt. These essay questions are almost impossible to answer aren't they - how are we supposed to know how the readers felt then! As now, some will have loved them & some hated them. Sorry this is not too helpful for your friend, I wish them every success.

As far as I know Conan Doyle was the first do do that kind of detective fiction - the only contemporary I can think of is poe's murders in the rue morgue tho I aint sure of the exact dates.

The twists at the end - cos of Holmes's skills and the "newness" of the subject matter made it what it is at the time i reckon.

Thesedays, I think its just because theres not much modern stuff that can touch it , even if it is a bit formulaic when you've read em all in one go (like I did once)

Personally, I always found the Sherlock Holmes stories to be really quite macabre, and never really took to them for that reason.

However - and this is just purely my opinion - the popularity of such works as Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein may have been related to the fact that all-things-macabre were very popular in Victorian times.

Jet was the jewellery of choice and basically anything/everything funereal was in fashion. All to do with Queen Victoria's overwhelming mourning for Prince Albert.

So, some of Sherlock Holmes' popularity may have been due to its disturbing/murky atmosphere and the often bizarre nature of the stories. All very gothic!

StarSparkle

I loved Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid. They are bleak – Holmes was a drug addict, for goodness sake! – but then again, it's comforting for the casual reader to have each and every case safely wrapped up through nothing more than the application of logic.

Thankyou!!!!! I haven't read it so I couldn't help her much apart from hypothetical things that would apply to any essay like that.

She's very very grateful, I've just phoned her, she was finding it difficult!

The whole gothic thing because of queen vic's mourning of Prince Albert was very interesting, thankyou! They like you to add historical context!

Lottie