Abstract
This chapter explores the ways several series now take as their point of departure the early life—or developing character(s)—of Sherlock Holmes: how did he become “the” detective? Stephen Peacock’s The Boy Sherlock Holmes (2007–12) series and Andrew Lane’s equally excellent series, Young Sherlock Holmes (2010–15), trace the developing, particularised and nonconformist education of the young man that convincingly foreshadow the later man in the fictions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It has also arisen in neo-Victorian mysteries for young adults that young female detectives are literally and/or figuratively the offspring of Sherlock Holmes. The second section focuses on Enola Holmes to demonstrate that neo-Victorian narratives of crime use the differing experiences of a young woman who is nonconformist in her actions and agency uses her strengths of observation and detailed consideration to take up the Sherlockian legacy.
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Notes
- 1.
For a strong discussion of one such connection of interest here, see Lucy Andrew (2012).
- 2.
Excluded from discussion here are Brittany Cavallaro’s A Study in Charlotte and ensuing series which makes, perhaps, the most direct attempt to lure the twenty-first-century young adult audience by creating a neo-Victorian narrative that contains the duo of Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson, the great-great-great grandchildren of the Victorian sleuth and his friend, who attend a boarding school in Connecticut, a clear attempt to woo an American audience for the works. Another series beginning with Lock & Mori (2015) by Heather W. Petty have high-schoolers Sherlock Holmes and Miss James “Mori” Moriarty meet, fall in love, then become enemies. Neither author attempts a self-conscious neo-Victorian narrative even though they intentionally invoke Conan Doyle with the premise of their novels and the names of their characters.
- 3.
Zelijka Flegar makes an interesting observation, that such films have “rendered famous literary protagonists as superheroes or, in the case of famous detectives, super-sleuths” (2022, n.p.).
- 4.
Sann Nyqvist makes a useful distinction with corrective pastiches as those which “return to the world of the originals in order to account for the inconsistencies and mistakes in the originals” (2017, 2.3) and complementary pastiches as those which “continue[] the original series in a straightforward manner” (2.4).
- 5.
See Gardner (2020) or the complaint itself at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956021-Sherlock.html. The Conan Doyle Estate and Netflix agreed to jointly dismiss the suit later in 2020.
- 6.
Unlike in neo-Victorian fiction, Victorian female counterparts may use disguise but it is “a tactic reserved primarily for the lower-class women … as it would be frowned upon for a woman of the gentry to position herself as anything else” (Nolan 143) as a means of detection in the nineteenth-century fiction.
- 7.
In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes remarks on his memory,
I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. (2009a [1887], 21)
- 8.
- 9.
In the Conan Doyle canon, Holmes’ parents are without names.
- 10.
The names of this character are significant; Jonathan Bell was the Scottish surgeon upon whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based the character of Sherlock Holmes. Several such connections via intertextual and metatextual elements are made in the series.
- 11.
- 12.
For novels, amongst others, see Mary Russell in the Russell and Holmes mysteries beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994) by Laurie King, and Charlotte Holmes in the Lady Sherlock series beginning with A Study in Scarlet Women (2016) by Sherry Thomas; transmedia adaptations include Eurus Holmes in Sherlock, and in Elementary, John Watson is now Joan Watson, and James Moriarty is now Holmes’ past lover, Jamie Moriarty who has gone by the alias, Irene. The role of Irene Adler is vastly expanded in the films Sherlock and Sherlock: Game of Shadows where she is both past lover of Sherlock and unwilling cooperator of Moriarty, but the intent is neo-Victorian revision, not authenticity. In an interesting acknowledgement of the neo-Victorianism of her books, King has commented more directly, “Seventeen books later, I have learned a great deal about Russell, Holmes, and their world. I have learned even more about myself and my world, since a central raison d’etre of reading history, even fictional history, is that it is a mirror, reflecting unexpected sides of our times and ourselves” including “Politics, women’s rights, religious expression, [and] governmental oppression” (n.p.).
- 13.
Erin Temple also makes this point in her discussion of direct address and girl power in Enola Holmes (2021, 30).
- 14.
The BBC Sherlock does include a mysterious sister, Eurus, who is one year younger than Sherlock, eight years younger than Mycroft, but who is—or is believed to be—locked away from the world due to psychosis and her psychopathic tendencies. The viewer is later shown that Eurus is a genius with an intellect agreed to be even higher functioning than her brothers.
- 15.
As a point of note, Singh’s bestseller was later adapted for a young adult audience (2000).
- 16.
The corset is also adapted into a kind of weaponry or defence in texts not discussed here. For example, Enola finds the corset keeps her from harm, and see The Girl in the Steel Corset in The Steampunk Chronicles series (2011–14) by Kady Cross. For an excellent, extended discussion of the corset in such works, see Amy Montz (2019).
- 17.
Just as Peacock has Holmes learn “Bellitsu,” it would be thought provoking to see if Springer might have envisioned Enola learning “Suffrajitsu” from Eudoria, the Suffrage version of martial arts self-defence, had the story occurred in the 1910s (see Ruz and Parkinson 2015, n.p.).
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Maier, S.E. (2024). Irregulars: Sherlockian Youth as Outsiders. In: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47295-4_6
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