SHERLOCK HOLMES 8 full MP3 audio books on DVD + BONUSES

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, two are narrated by Holmes himself and two others are written in the third person. In two stories ("The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott"), Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, whereas Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story.

Conan Doyle said that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.

EARLY LIFE

Early life Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes' life outside of the adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories; nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families do construct a loose biographical picture of the detective. An estimate of Holmes' age in the story "His Last Bow" places his birth around 1854; commonly, the date is cited as 6 January.

Holmes states that he first developed his deduction methods while an undergraduate. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that, given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex [College] perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes’s position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there".  His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students.  According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take up detection as a profession and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

From 1881, Holmes is described as having lodgings at 221B Baker Street, London, from where he runs his private detective agency. 221B is a flat up seventeen steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the "upper end" of the road. Until the arrival of Dr. Watson, Holmes works alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass, including a host of informants and a group of street children he calls the Baker Street Irregulars. The Irregulars appear in three stories, "The Sign of the Four", "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".

Little is said of Holmes' family. His parents are unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great-uncle was Vernet, the French artist. He has an older brother, Mycroft, a government official, who appears in three stories; he's mentioned in a number of others.  Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction. However, he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London."

It's unclear whether Holmes has any other siblings. In "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Holmes says, "I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for", leading some to suppose the existence of same. But he mentions this only to warn a woman in a case, taking her as his sister; therefore, this may be a mere figure of speech.

LIFE WITH DR. WATSON

Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death; his residence is maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

Watson has two roles in Holmes' life. First, he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. Second, he is Holmes' chronicler (his "Boswell" as Holmes refers to him). Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. Holmes is often described as criticising Watson's writings as sensational and populist, suggesting that they neglect to accurately and objectively report the pure calculating "science" of his craft.

Nevertheless, Holmes' friendship with Watson is undoubtedly his most significant relationship. In several stories, Holmes' fondness for Watson—often hidden beneath his cold, intellectual exterior—is revealed. In "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded in a confrontation with a villain; while the bullet wound proves to be "quite superficial," Watson is moved by Holmes' reaction:

It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

In all, Holmes is described as being in active practice for twenty-three years, with Watson documenting his cases for seventeen of them.

RETIREMENT

Holmes retires to a bee farm on the Sussex Downs in 1903-04, where he takes up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen." Only one adventure, narrated by Holmes himself pursuing the case as an amateur, takes place during the detective's retirement.

HABITS AND PERSONALITY

Holmes describes himself as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In an early story, Watson describes Holmes as:

The worst tenant in London...he keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece... He had a horror of destroying documents...Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.

What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout the stories, Holmes would dive into his apparent mess of random papers and artifacts, only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.

In matters of personal hygiene, by contrast, Holmes is described in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his intensely practical pursuit of his profession, however; in the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet", his hands are discolored with acid stains, while later Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct chemical experiments.

Watson frequently makes note of Holmes' erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" where, according to Watson:

Holmes had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.

His chronicler does not consider Holmes's habitual use of a pipe, or his less-frequent use of cigarettes and cigars, a vice. Nor, does Watson condemn Holmes's willingness to bend the truth or break the law on behalf of a client (e.g., lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses) where he feels it morally justifiable.

Holmes is portrayed as a patriot, acting on behalf of the government in matters of national security in a number of stories.  He also carries out counter-intelligence work in His Last Bow, set at the beginning of WWI. As shooting practice, the detective adorned the wall of his Baker Street lodgings with "VR" (Victoria Regina) in bullet pocks made by his pistol.

Holmes has an ego that at times borders on arrogant, albeit with justification; he draws pleasure from baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. He does not seek fame, however, and is usually content to allow the police to take public credit for his work. It's often only when Watson publishes his stories that Holmes's role in the case becomes apparent.

Holmes's demeanour is presented as dispassionate and cold. Yet when in the midst of an adventure, Holmes can sparkle with remarkable passion. He has a flair for showmanship and will prepare elaborate traps to capture and expose a culprit, often to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN

The only woman to impress Holmes was Irene Adler, who was always referred to by Holmes as "The Woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term—even though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person in only one, "A Scandal in Bohemia".

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", Holmes is engaged to be married, but only with the motivation of gaining information for his case. He demonstrates clear interest in several of the more charming female clients that come his way (in particular, Violet Hunter in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"). Holmes inevitably "manifested no further interest in the client when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems." Holmes found their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they brought to him) invigorating, as distinct to any romantic interest. These episodes show Holmes possesses a degree of charm, yet, apart from the case of Adler, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]." Holmes states, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind"; in fact he finds "the motives of women... so inscrutable... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin." However, as Doyle remarked to muse Joseph Bell, "Holmes is as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love".

A further point of interest in Holmes' relationships with women is that the only joy he derives from their company is the problems they bring to him to solve. In The Sign of the Four, Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine," and Holmes is quoted as saying, "It is of the first importance, not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, -- a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money..." This references Holmes's lack of interest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, as Watson states that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times." At the end of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", Holmes states: "I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act as our lawless lion-hunter had done." In the story, the explorer Dr Sterndale had killed the man who murdered his beloved, Brenda Tregennis, to exact a revenge which the law could not provide. Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women." Again in The Sign of the Four, Watson quotes Holmes as saying, "I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted, -- not the best of them." Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent."

ROLE IN THE HISTORY OF THE DETECTIVE STORY

Although Sherlock Holmes isn't the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq), his name has become a by-word for the part. His stories also include several detective story characters such as the loyal but less intelligent assistant, a role for which Dr Watson has become the archetype. The investigating detective became a popular genre with many authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers after the demise of Holmes, with characters such as Hercule Poirot, and Lord Peter Wimsey. Forensic methods become less important than the psychology of the criminal, despite the strong growth in forensics in use by the police in the early 20th century.

AN INSPIRATION FOR SCIENTISTS

Sherlock Holmes has occasionally been used in the scientific literature. Radford (1999) speculates on his intelligence. Using Conan Doyle’s stories as data, Radford applies three different methods to estimate Sherlock Holmes’s IQ, and concludes that his intelligence was very high indeed. Snyder (2004) examines Holmes’ methods in the light of the science and the criminology of the mid- to late-19th century. Kempster (2006) compares neurologists’ skills with those displayed by Holmes. Finally, Didierjean and Gobet (2008) review the literature on the psychology of expertise by taking as model a fictional expert: Sherlock Holmes. They highlight aspects of Doyle’s books that are in line with what is currently known about expertise, aspects that are implausible, and aspects that suggest further research.

In 1934 the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York were founded. Both are still active (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951). The London-based society is one of many worldwide who arrange visits to the scenes of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, such as the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.

The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scion societies"—offshoots—of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Sherlockian societies in many countries like India and Japan being the more prominent countries which have a history of such activity.

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes' sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still open to the public. In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen, Switzerland another museum opened; naturally, they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character.

THE ORIGINAL STORIES

The original Sherlock Holmes stories consist of fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The short stories were originally published in periodicals; they were later gathered into five anthologies: