“Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes”

We’re approaching the 125th anniversary of Sherlock Holmes’ introduction to the reading world. His first adventure, in A Study in Scarlet, was serialized in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in late 1887. Gregory McNamee commemorates this occasion with a short piece for the Kirkus Reviews Web site. It begins:

It was an inspired but utterly accidental moment when Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scottish doctor struggling to establish himself both as a physician and as a writer in late Victorian London, drew upon the habits of an irascible medical school mentor to concoct a character that he pegged as a “consulting detective,” an utterly newfangled job description.

You can enjoy the full article here.