Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887-1927)

Stories

"The Adventure of the Three Gables"

• Holmes asks Mrs Maberley, "You don’t happen to have a Raphael or a first folio Shakespeare without knowing it?”

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"

• Objects which resist commodification because of their inbrication in history, historical print cultures: manuscripts, pen knives (mass produced?)
• Narrative logic of newspaper advertisements, of consumer capitalism: rare ms sold, opticians
• "When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of material, to select the cases which are most interesting in themselves, and at the same time most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin--an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour. Each of these would furnish a narrative, but on the whole I am of opinion that none of them unites so many singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place, which includes not only the lamentable death of young Willoughby Smith, but..."
• "It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery."
• "It is trying work for the eyes. So far as I can make out, it is nothing more exciting than an Abbey’s accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth century[.]"
• "It was one of those small sealing-wax knives to be found on old-fashioned writing-tables, with an ivory handle and a stiff blade."
• "This is recent, quite recent. See how the brass shines where it is cut. An old scratch would be the same colour as the surface. Look at it through my lens. There’s the varnish, too, like earth on each side of a furrow. Is Mrs. Marker there?”"
  • again quasi-archaeological imagery
• "It was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes, which had overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the corners, or were stacked all round at the base of the cases."
• "To a poor bookworm and invalid like myself, such a blow is paralyzingly. I seem to have lost the faculty of thought."
• "That is my MAGNUM OPUS--the pile of papers on the side table yonder. It is my analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut deep at the very foundation of revealed religion."
• "She is there,” said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the corner of the room. I saw the old man throw up his arms, a terrible convulsion passed over his grim face, and he fell back in his chair. At the same instant the bookcase at which Holmes pointed swung round upon a hinge, and a woman rushed out into the room. “You are right!” she cried, in a strange foreign voice. “You are right! I am here.”"