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  1. While looking for something else, came across this on a Facebook page called (logically) I Love Cats (click on image to enlarge):
    2 points
  2. The name Violet seems to have been a favorite of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as it was quite popular in Victorian England. There are four characters named "Violet" in the original Sherlock Holmes canon. These characters are: Violet Hunter from "The Copper Beeches" Violet Smith from "The Solitary Cyclist" Violet de Merville from "The Illustrious Client" Violet Westbury from "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" .
    1 point
  3. As you say, Doyle (speaking as Holmes) states that he borrowed the idea from Reade. Beyond that, the idea may have been passed from one person to another, as you suggest, or alternatively it may have arisen more or less independently in various minds over the centuries (or it may have been some of each). I believe there's a similar theory regarding the movement of particles, which may have inspired the human-behavior concept in some cases. Holmes may be correct that human behavior "in the aggregate ... becomes a mathematical certainty" but that concept may not be particularly useful in practice. Even Holmes occasionally let his deductions be led astray by his preconceived notions, and most people are far more likely to do so. Even (or especially?) people considered experts in their field often have their observations clouded by assumptions. Even if a new Holmes should somehow arise among us, I suspect he would be attacked from all sides.
    1 point
  4. Okay, here's the connection. If you're familiar with Foundation you know about psychohistory -- the fictional science in the series that allows psychohistorians to predict the future via an intimate understanding and scientific analysis of human behavior. In Foundation, Asimov calls it "a profound statistical science." Predictions of the behaviors of any given individual are not reliable, but become more accurate when applied to larger and larger populations. In the Foundation stories, the population to which psychohistorical analysis is applied are the quadrillions of human beings who inhabit the galaxy as part of the galactic empire. With such a large population, psychohistorical predictions can be quite accurate. In The Sign of the Four, Doyle writes: “Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician." When I first read this, it struck me as a very accurate summation of psychohistory! I then wondered whether Doyle had invented psychohistory, or if (probably more likely) Asimov had been influenced by this passage. Then I realized that the idea was not original with Doyle -- he was talking about Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man. I have not read that book, but I've always been fascinated by the similarity of the idea to that of Asimov's psychohistory.
    1 point
  5. I think most, if not all of us are glad that Arthur Conan Doyle ended up calling his fictional detective "Sherlock Holmes," rather than "Sherrinford Holmes" as he had originally intended: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Sherlock_Holmes I suppose, though, that we prefer "Sherlock" because we're used to it and "Sherrinford" sounds strange. If it had been the other way around, presumably "Sherlock" would sound strange. In either case, I think the name "Mycroft" sounds vaguely fungal...
    1 point
  6. Baring-Gould, Bell's 'Baker St Studies', Starret's 'Private Life' and '221b', Brend's 'My Dear Holmes', Blakeney's 'Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Ficton?', Holroyd's 'Seventeen Steps to 221b' and 'Baker St ByWays', Harrison's 'In The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes' and 'The World of..'; Trevor hall's 'Ten Literary Studies', 'The late mr Sherlock Holmes' and 'Sherlock Holmes and His Creator'..... plus the collected Lord Donegal's 'Baker St and Beyond'..... if you can find an affordable copy of Dorothy Sayers' 'Sherlockian Studies' get it!!... I did used to own Bell's 'Chronology' but as lovely an item as it was to have, chronology in detail bores me rigid so i gave it to a friend's charity auction. it's a compact little library but infinitely rich
    1 point
  7. In keeping with our long history of picking nits out of Sherlockiana, I'd like to show you all a continuity error I have discovered in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode "A Scandal in Bohemia." I'm referring to the Granada Television series starring Jeremy Brett. Here is a link to the episode on YouTube: Observe Holmes seated at the mirror at time index 7:22. The camera shifts to Watson reading the note. When the camera shifts back to Holmes at time 7:43, note his attire! BTW, this is an excellent episode, one of my favorites!
    0 points
  8. I've heard that theory before but I'm not sure I'm buying it! 😊
    0 points
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