Sherlock Holmes Research Paper

“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants.” (Doyle, 1891) What did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have in his little brain attic when he conceived the character of Sherlock Holmes? To solve this mystery, the proper clues must be discovered and organized just as Holmes would do in the stories.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle drew from his love of reading and writing, a combination of people as inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, and captured the personality of London at that time in a way that made the stories feel as if they were nonfiction accounts of real life cases.

Doyle was an avid reader. His favorite books were mystery and adventure based books like Ivanhoe and by authors such as Jules Verne and Robert Michael Ballentyne. These mystery adventures inspired Doyle to write his own stories of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. (Diniejko, 2013)

Dr. Joseph Bell was the real mind of Holmes. Bell was a teacher at Doyle’s medical school and Doyle served as his clerk. He taught the importance of using all of your senses to accurately diagnose a patient and the importance of observation of the patient and he prided himself in using deductive and inductive reasoning, like Holmes. Even some of Bell’s cold indifference showed up in Doyles’ earlier stories. (University, 2006)

Another inspiration for Holmes was Henry Littlejohn. He was also a doctor and had an official relationship with the London police. He was the Surgeon of Police and Medical Officer of Health and also served as a police consultant when medical expertise was needed. (Chaunton, 2012) This relates to the character of Holmes in the sense that Inspector Lestrade would consult him whenever he and the police were stumped with a particularly mysterious