A Study in Scarlet

By Christopher Routledge
Everybody knows Sherlock Holmes. He is right up there with Hamlet, Heathcliff and Oliver Twist as
one of the best-known characters in all of English Literature. His name is familiar even to people who
never read. He is the archetypal fictional detective and a byword for careful observation, rational
examination of evidence, and clear-sighted intelligence. Howard Haycraft, whose book Murder For
Pleasure (1941)1 was one of the first serious works of criticism on detective fiction, finds many
problems with the Holmes stories, yet he concludes But for the tales in which [Holmes] appeared the
detective story as we know it today might never have developed or only in a vastly different and
certainly less pleasurable form.
Holmes first appeared in print in 1887, in Arthur Conan Doyles short novel A Study in Scarlet. In
practical terms this first Holmes story is structurally weak, broken-backed, stylistically uneven, and
derivative. It has been noted many times that Holmes arrives at the solution to the mystery using
information he has kept secret from the reader, a cardinal sin in detective fiction. But for all that, A
Study in Scarlet was revolutionary. Its impact was felt almost immediately on popular culture in
general and on the genre of detective fiction in particular. In the 120 years that have passed since
publication, A Study in Scarlet has emerged as arguably one of the most influential pieces of writing to
come out of the nineteenth century. As George Orwell asks in his article Good Bad Books (Tribune,
November 2, 1945), Who has worn better, Conan Doyle or Meredith?
A Study in Scarlet was published by Ward Lock when Conan Doyle was 28 years old. The book had
been rejected by several publishers and like many young writers who would rather see their work
published than take a stand, in November 1886 Conan Doyle signed away all his rights for a miserly
25. The following year it appeared in Beetons Christmas Annual and while Conan Doyle did not
benefit financially its publication eventually led to a commission to write a second Holmes story, The
Sign of Four, for the American magazine Lippincotts. By then Conan Doyle was well aware that Ward
Lock had taken advantage of him and he also offered the new story to British publisher Spencer
Blackett. It was published in 1890 and in 1891 Conan Doyle began his long association with Strand
Magazine, where most of the Sherlock Holmes stories were serialised over the next 25 years.
Holmess powers of observation and deduction have become a benchmark for detectives, real and
imagined, but Conan Doyle did not invent the rationalist detective. Holmes is preceded by detectives
in stories by Emile Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, and in particular by Edgar Allan Poe. What Conan Doyle
did was to transform a sensational figure into a serious literary creation, though it is only relatively
recently that he has been treated as such. Poes detective stories from the 1840s featured amateur
sleuth C. Auguste Dupin and a nameless, awestruck narrator-sidekick. The link with Holmes and
Watson is obvious. Poes stories were popular, but tales of mystery and suspense, then as now, were
considered inferior, even disreputable fare.

Conan Doyle was aware of the limitations of detective fiction when he began A Study in Scarlet and
wanted his detective to be a cut above the usual mystery story fare. It begins with reassurances that
here was a story for a more knowing, more sophisticated audience. Not for his readers the gaudy
voyeurism of the Penny Dreadfuls; here was science and philosophy, music and poetry, as well as
murder. At the beginning of the novel, not long after Holmes and Watson have moved into their
lodgings at 221b Baker Street, Watson tells Holmes that he reminds him of Poes great detective
character:
No doubt you think you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin, he observed. Now in my
opinion Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of breaking in on his friends thoughts with an
apropos remark after a quarter of an hours silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some
analytical genius no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to
imagine. 2
Holmess own ability to see the significance in tiny detail is better developed than Dupins. It is also
placed in the context of a man whose personal habits and mode of living are both regular and chaotic;
industrial and artistic. On the one hand Holmes embodies rationalism, scientific endeavour, and
careful observation. At the scene of the first murder in A Study in Scarlet he analyses the room, taking
measurements, collecting clues, and studying surfaces with his trademark magnifying glass. At this he
is better than the police, who are unscientific and ignorant. But on the other hand Holmes is also a
speculative man, who plays the violin in a freeform, abstract way and, as becomes more clear in later
stories, takes mind-altering drugs. In this respect Holmes combines several great Victorian character
tropes: the inspired natural scientist and the disturbed lone genius; the savvy, modern, man about
town and the alienated urban outcast. Rather than making him a detached researcher, Conan Doyle
gave Holmes a worldly doctors eye. His refined analytical skills make him more of the world not less.
A mark of the significance of A Study in Scarlet is that despite its weaknesses it seems to have
established the general structural arrangement of most successful detective stories, as described by
critic Tsvetan Todorov in his important essay The Typology of Detective Fiction.3 It begins with a
murder, which appears at first to be the central problem facing the detective. But the real mystery lies
deep in the past, long before the central crime takes place. Like all good detective stories A Study in
Scarlet extends beyond the murder in Brixton with which it begins, to address greater mysteries. Its
scope includes the great westward migration in the United States, the alien (to British readers) culture
of The Country of the Saints and, in the figure of Watson himself, the damaged young men who
returned to London from military campaigns in Afghanistan and India.
Contrast this with The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), often considered to be the first true
detective story in English. Like A Study in Scarlet Poes story features a reclusive detective whose
eccentric habits and peculiar talent for reading clues fascinate and amaze the narrator. But the focus
of Poes story, a double murder and a locked room, is the only mystery. There is nothing of any
consequence behind the events in the Rue Morgue, even if the solution to the mystery comes as a
surprise. This mid-nineteenth-century tale has none of the doubt and uncertainty of Conan Doyles,

though Dupin, like Holmes, combines rational method with elastic imagination to solve his puzzles.
Holmes is essentially a Romantic hero, risking his health, his sanity, even his life, to be able to see
more clearly than those around him. But he is also in his own way an institutional figure, developing
his theories on detection and forensic science for the general good.
Conan Doyle also went a long way towards making Holmes seem real. The offset narration, taking the
form of Watsons journal, is calculated to confirm the truthfulness of the story. His success in
convincing readers that Holmes actually existed would soon become a curse for the real-life tenants of
221b Baker Street who had to deal with the detectives mailbag. This may well have been one reason
for the runaway success of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Victorian readers living in many of Britains
large cities were afraid of street crime, drunkenness, and seemingly random acts of violence, much of
which was blamed on foreigners and the failings of the police and justice system. In such an
atmosphere Conan Doyles masterly construction of Holmes through the authoritative voice of a doctor
and military man made him seem a plausible enough saviour.
In his extraordinary intelligence, physical abilities and self-reliance, Holmes seems at times a hero
more suited to the twentieth century than the Victorian era. Detective fiction after A Study in
Scarletwas dominated by amateur and consulting detectives, including Agatha Christies Miss Marple
and Hercule Poirot, Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey, and, in the United States, Rex Stouts Nero
Wolfe. But as Conan Doyles brother in law E.W. Hornung once said, Though he might be more
humble, theres no police like Holmes.
Notes
1. Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure (1941). This edition New York: Carroll and Graff, 1984. p.
61.
2. Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur. A Study in Scarlet (1887), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. p. 25.
3. Todorov, Tsvetan. The Typology of Detective Fiction. In The Poetics of Prose. Oxford: Blackwell,
1977.