It’s impossible to read the Sherlock Holmes stories without thinking about the inconsistencies that make these tales unique in literature. Realizing that others wrote about these issues with the same passion that we felt was all the incentive it took to start us on a lifetime of research and publishing. There are many stories of crime and detection by other authors, with interesting plots and colorful characters. But none of them constitutes a chronicle spanning 40 years of one man’s life, and none has spawned as vast a literature as that surrounding the Holmes canon. When it comes to Sherlock Holmes, being a fan and being a writer are almost inseparable.
Solberg, Andrew L., and Robert S. Katz. 2017. “Fandom, Publishing, and Playing the Grand Game.” In “Sherlock Holmes Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the Great Game,” edited by Betsy Rosenblatt and Roberta Pearson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 23.