Sherlock Holmes, Sold for £25

The story as it is told

Arthur Conan Doyle was a young doctor with a teacher he never forgot: Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary with an eagle face and an uncanny trick of spotting details. When Doyle sat down to invent the greatest detective in fiction, the story goes, he did not invent him at all. He copied Bell, entirely.

The detective's first case came out at Christmas 1887, and Sherlock Holmes was born.

What we can confirm

Doyle credited Bell, but "entirely" is the disputed part. The story ran in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887; the exact month of issue is not verified here.

In the mid-1880s Arthur Conan Doyle was a young doctor writing in his spare time. His memoir, Memories and Adventures (1924), tells how the detective came to be. He had admired Émile Gaboriau's plots and Poe's detective Dupin, and wondered whether he could add something of his own. "I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details." Joseph Bell was a surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary whose strong point, Doyle wrote, was diagnosis "not only of disease, but of occupation and character."

Doyle wanted a name that didn't give the character away, so no "Mr. Sharps or Mr. Ferrets." He kept a notebook leaf of options. "First it was Sherringford Holmes; then it was Sherlock Holmes." The detective needed someone to tell his stories, "a commonplace comrade as a foil," and Doyle chose a "drab, quiet name for this unostentatious man. Watson would do."

The manuscript went round the publishers. James Payn, who had taken Doyle's "Habakuk Jephson's Statement" for the Cornhill, "applauded but found it both too short and too long." The publisher Arrowsmith "received it in May, 1886, and returned it unread in July." Two or three others "sniffed and turned away." Then Doyle tried Ward, Lock & Co., which specialised in cheap and sensational fiction. Their letter, dated October 30, 1886, said they liked the story but "the market is flooded at present with cheap fiction," and offered to hold it until the next year and "give you £25 for the copyright."

Doyle hesitated. The money was small and the delay long, but he was "heart-sick" at the rejections and accepted. The story appeared as Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887. Ward Lock, Doyle wrote, "made a wonderful bargain, for they not only had their Christmas number but they brought out numerous editions of the book, and finally they even had the valuable cinema rights for this paltry payment. I never at any time received another penny for it from this firm."

That's a rights story as much as a literary one. Doyle sold the copyright outright, so the publisher, not the author, controlled reprints and, decades later, film rights. A century later the estate's control over Holmes ended up in court. In Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate (2014), the editor Leslie Klinger sought a declaration that he could use Holmes and Watson as they appear in the stories already out of copyright. The Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Richard Posner, agreed: when a story enters the public domain, its characters do too, and only the new elements added in later stories stay protected until those stories expire. Posner noted that the estate was effectively seeking "135 years (1887-2022) of copyright protection for the character of Sherlock Holmes as depicted in the first Sherlock Holmes story," and called the appeal one that "borders on the quixotic."

The facts

• Joe Bell inspiration; "Sherringford Holmes"; Watson; Payn's comment; Arrowsmith May to July 1886; Ward Lock letter of Oct 30, 1886 offering £25 for the copyright; Beeton's Christmas Annual of 1887; "never at any time received another penny." Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (1924), Project Gutenberg #66991, gutenberg.org
• 56 stories and 4 novels, 1887-1927; last ten published 1923-27; copyrights on the rest expired; characters in PD works are free; later additions protected; "135 years (1887-2022)"; "borders on the quixotic"; AFFIRMED. Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd., No. 14-1128 (7th Cir. June 16, 2014), law.justia.com
• Library copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887: Yale Beinecke catalog record, collections.library.yale.edu (search result; open before citing details)

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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