The World of Sherlock Holmes

by Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison has minutely researched the Great Sleuth's life and adventures, revealing a wealth of hitherto unsuspected facts. He traces Holmes's unusual university career and his brilliant achievements at the top level of Victorian diplomacy. Here is a man with a career far more glittering than Watson's written account ever hinted.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mystery

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1973

About the author

Michael Harrison was the pen name of English detective fiction and fantasy author Maurice Desmond Rohan. Harrison published seventeen novels between 1934 and 1954, when he turned to writing detective fiction. He wrote pastiches of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, and was a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar.

Reviews

[Siri Olsen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hm. Despite being an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes as well as an avid reader of Sherlockian literature and studies, I must admit that this book wasn't my cup of tea. The World of Sherlock Holmes reads more like a very long article in a Sherlockian magazine than as a coherent book able to stand on its own. It constantly references the work of the great Sherlockian William Baring-Gould, often to the extent that Michael Harrison will not provide the context that is desperately needed for the reader to follow his reasoning and instead simply refer to Baring-Gould. This makes the text itself feel disjointed, and the arguments become difficult to follow as a result. The book also takes an... interesting approach... to mixing real and imagined history. Obviously the premise of this and many similar books is to treat Sherlock Holmes as a historical figure, a person who really lived. However, most books I've read in this genre depict Holmes as a private, albeit important, person, following the canon quite closely and never straying too far into conjecture based on real historical events. That approach makes it easy to believe that Sherlock Holmes could truly be a real person, just a private person about whom very little came out to the general public outside of Doctor Watson's writings. Michael Harrison seems to take the completely opposite approach. According to him, Sherlock Holmes could very well be one of the most important people in European history between 1880 and 1914, being involved in basically every major diplomatic crisis and advising apparently the entirety of Europe on political matters. To me, this not only goes against the core personality of Sherlock Holmes as established in the canon, it completely takes you out of the book as you have to stop and ponder how ridiculous it all is and how unlikely it is that, if such a person really existed, so little would be known about him. Overall, I just find that I can't in good faith recommend this book. I'm sorry. It was a mess.

[A.L. Bellettiere · Rating 1 out of 5]

For a book that would seem to be Holmes centric, Harrison also seems to have a little bit of ADD. He starts off talking about the man and then goes off into the theme of the book. And honestly, what I thought this book would be about turned out more differently. And Harrison , I think, should have called his book The Real World of and Around Sherlock Holmes because he is referring to events happening at the same time as Holmes' life was going on. What I expected was a bit of a geography lesson and little tidbits of the locations mentioned in the canon. I don't mainly read Holmes for the lesson, read for Holmes' intellect and adventure.

[Jonathan Saldana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Saldana
9-18-16
Per 2
An Older Book

The World of Sherlock Holmes, Michael Harrison, 227, 1975, biography.
This book goes over the time period of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. It show what he did before he became the world-famous detective and also more background information on his most famous cases.

I give this book a three because although it was very interesting, some of the history was a bit boring.

I recommend this book, but probably not for recreational purposes to anyone who enjoys reading about Sherlock Holmes.