Canon of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes and his biographer Dr John Watson, as depicted in a Sidney Paget drawing in "The Adventure of the Empty House"
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Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.[1] In this context, the term "canon" is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle's original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters. Usually capitalized by fans of the Sherlockian game as "the Canon", the description of these 60 adventures as the Sherlock Holmes canon and the game of applying the methods of "Higher Criticism" to it was started by Ronald Knox as a playful use of the traditional definition of canon as an authoritative list of books accepted as holy scripture.[2]

  1. ^ Peter Haining, "Introduction" in Doyle, Arthur Conan (1993). The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 1-56619-198-X. Edited by Peter Haining.
  2. ^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Unpopular Opinions (London: Victor Gollancz, 1946), 7.