When Sherlock Holmes dies in
1891, his friend John Watson commemorated the loss with the publication of
twenty-four short stories in The Strand
Magazine. Watson had previously
published two novels of Holmes while the detective was still alive, and until
Sherlock Holmes came back into Watson’s life (SPOILER ALERT! Sherlock Holmes never dies the first time!) those
twenty-six cases were all the reading public was given.
Later, when Holmes was about
to retire from London and detective work, Watson would begin publishing again,
this time writing up thirty tales for publication. (I’m not counting two
written by Holmes and two by an unknown hand.)
The division between
pre-death and after-death cases is so close that one has to wonder if the true
numbers, if you split them by when they took place isn’t an even twenty-eight
on each side. The Hound of the
Baskervilles, published as “a posthumous memoir” is plainly pre-death. And
I strongly suspect the undated “Charles Augustus Milverton” of being the other
tale meant for earlier publication and withheld.
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