How Mark Twain Saved Sherlock Holmes
In 1902, as far as the world knew, Sherlock Holmes was canonically dead. He had been since 1893’s “The Final Problem” in which he tumbled to his apparent death down the precipices of Reichenbach Falls taking his nemesis Professor Moriarty down with him. After nearly a decade of trying (in vain) to pacify enraged fans, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought the sleuth back in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901, arguably the tour de force of the Holmes canon. But there was a catch. Baskervilles was set around 1889, “The Final Problem” was set in 1891. This was Doyle’s compromise. Give his readers more of their beloved detective without officially committing to resurrect the character. It was not until September of 1903 that Doyle revived Sherlock Holmes for good in the short story "The Adventure of the Empty House", set in 1894, three years after his apparent death. It was explained in this short work that Holmes faked his death in “The Final Problem” to lure out the rest of ...