Sherlock Holmes in Portrait and Profile

by Walter Klinefelter

First edition. Contains many illustrations. A look at the character of Sherlock Holmes as portraited by various illustrators over the years. Presentation from Klinefelter dated 1963 on free endpaper. Jacket chipped and rubbed. xii, 104 pages. cloth-backed boards, dust jacket.. 4to..

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

The back cover of Walter Klinefelter’s excellent book begins “Currently, no doubt, the picture of Sherlock Holmes in most peoples’ minds is that of Basil Rathbone.” Jeremy Brett’s Granada performance certainly at least creates the doubt that Klinefelter noted was absent. And more people have seen Robert Downey Jr's portrayal than any other.

But what has not changed since he wrote those words in 1975 is that Sherlock Holmes in Portrait and Profile is an engaging piece of Sherlockiana and still the finest resource on illustrations of the Canon that has been published.

In my own essay, 'The Definitive Holmes,' I mention that it is difficult for us in this visual age to imagine a time when printed media shaped our images of fictional characters. There was no television, and movies scarcely resembled what they are today. Not everyone could see a stage performance, so it was illustrations in newspapers and magazines that often determined how Sherlock Holmes was pictured.

Klinefelter’s book takes us along a publication timeline of the drawings that accompanied the Canon’s original stories. Many of these black and white pictures can be found on the Internet. But nearly three decades ago, many Holmes fans had not seen many of the illustrations that he uses to trace the history.

There are plenty of Sidney Paget drawings, and Frederic Dorr Steele is certainly not neglected. But you’ll also find the works of George Hutchinson, James Greig, Charles Kerr, Robert Hoof and Harry C. Edwards. But it’s the narrative that makes this book timeless.

Klinefelter starts with the first illustrations for A Study in Scarlet and continues through the final short story publications in 1927. He discusses which artists drew for the different stories, and where they were first published in America (while The Strand had pretty much locked up Holmes beginning with The Adventures, there was no single distributor in the United States.

An awful lot of Sherlockiana is written in academia style for a rather narrow audience and comes across as stuffy. Sherlock Holmes in Portrait and Profile is accessible, interesting, informative and well illustrated. It remains the best book on its topic.

[Dan Blackley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of essays. Disappointing.