Sherlock Holmes Handbook. Christopher Redmond

His Last Bow, and for two of the Case-Book stories. He later illustrated one story (with cover) for the American Magazine, four (without covers) for Hearst’s International, and six (again without covers) for Liberty. A number of newspaper illustrations were also his work.

      The cover illustrations are, indeed, Steele’s most important Sherlockian work, from the deerstalkered figure at the Reichenbach for “The Empty House” to his gaunt, bedridden Holmes for “The Dying Detective” and the aging figure of Holmes in retirement for “His Last Bow.” For “The Norwood Builder,” Steele drew Holmes looking not at a thumb-print but at an entire bloody handprint on the wall, perhaps his only concession to melodrama; for a pamphlet edition of “The Dying Detective” some years later, the same drawing was used, with a sketched portrait of Doyle replacing the handprint on the wall under Holmes’s piercing scrutiny. It seems clear that the model Steele used for Holmes was William Gillette, who toured America through the early decades of the century presenting the great detective on stage. Walter Klinefelter identifies the Collier’s cover for “The Priory School” as being the most like Gillette; indeed, that picture of Holmes staring away across the moor does bear a striking resemblance to pictures of Gillette that appeared on publicity material for his play and also as a frontispiece in some contemporary editions of the Canon.

      Frederic Dorr Steele’s drawing of Holmes in his Baker Street laboratory was one of eleven spectacular covers he created for Collier’s magazine. Done in black and bronze, it appeared October 29, 1904, when “The Golden Pince-Nez” was first published as part of The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The story makes no mention of test tubes, but Holmes does use “my spirit-lamp,” perhaps a feature of the laboratory, to make coffee.

      Frederic Dorr Steele, born August 6, 1873, was primarily a book illustrator, having worked with texts by such authors as Richard Harding Davis, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and O. Henry. He was winner of the bronze medal at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, and spent his working life in New York, where he was a member of the elite Players Club. His obituary in The New York Times said he was also a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, but that does not seem to have been the case in any formal way, although he certainly was a friend of such early Sherlockians as Vincent Starrett and Gray Chandler Briggs. The Times also mentioned that shortly before his death (July 5, 1944) he had been working on illustrations for the projected Limited Editions Club version of the Canon. He was survived by his wife, Mary. A collection of anecdotes about Steele and appreciations of him and his work appeared in a 1991 issue of Baker Street Miscellanea.

      LATER ILLUSTRATORS. American magazines which published the stories in the early years of the century, but did not accompany them with Steele’s drawings, used such other illustrators as Arthur I. Keller, G. Patrick Nelson, W.T. Benda and John Richard Flanagan. The American book edition of The Return was illustrated not by Steele but by Charles Raymond Macauley. As for British editions after Paget, the editors of the Strand had similarly played the field, entrusting the illustration to Arthur Twidle, Gilbert Holiday, Joseph Simpson, H.M. Brock, Frank Wiles, Howard Elcock, Alec Ball, A. Gilbert, and even Paget’s brother Walter, who had been intended as the original illustrator two decades earlier.

      By the twentieth century it was no longer fashionable for books to contain illustrations. The Valley of Fear had only a frontispiece (by Wiles) in England, although the American edition had a few Keller drawings scattered through the text. His Last Bow and The Case-Book had no illustrations at all in either American or British editions. The collected editions of the Canon, the Doubleday Complete Sherlock Holmes, and the Long Stories and Short Stories published by John Murray, do not have illustrations, nor do most of the paperback volumes available.

      There has been no well-known illustrator of the Canon since Paget and Steele; images of the detective since the 1920s have been based on the faces and postures of actors, primarily (at least in North America) Basil Rathbone. The Paget illustrations, little-known in the United States until the appearance of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes with its many reproductions, are now often seen. A number of undistinguished illustrators have made attempts at Holmes for various post-copyright editions of the stories, often not rising above the deerstalker-and-calabash level of caricature also seen in countless cartoons and advertisements. Perhaps the most successful Sherlockian artist in recent decades has been Dan Day, whose work in the 1980s was not for book illustration but for comics.

TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSCRIPTIONS

      The stories of Sherlock Holmes have appeared in languages from French and German to Sinhalese and Urdu, despite the vast difficulties in conveying the nuances of British life and the subtleties of Holmes’s work to readers in far different cultures. It is said — although such statements are difficult to verify — that portions of the Canon have been put into more tongues than any other work save the Bible. There is also a persistent story that in some language, in some country (Egypt?), the Canon has been used as a textbook for detectives, but the facts have never been demonstrated. Certainly the Canon has often been a textbook for the learning of English; student editions with notes and apparatus in French, Russian, Swedish, and other languages are known.