Quotable Sherlock

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Although there have been previous books of quotations of Sherlock
Holmes, this one, edited by a Toronto entertainment writer and musician,
is much wider in scope. Its quotations are not only from Conan Doyle’s
great fictional detective, but also from Dr. Watson and conversations
involving minor characters in the 60 Sherlock Holmes adventures. They
are loosely arranged by subject. There is no table of contents, but a
thorough index allows one to search by subject or to find quotations
from a particular story. Thus, browsing through the pages cited for
“The Crooked Man,” one finds Holmes’s cruel judgment of the
British workman, and one can also find it by using “workman” in the
index. Appendixes include a biographical note on Arthur Conan Doyle and
a list of the nine Sherlock Holmes books and the stories therein.
Illustrations are the original Sidney Paget drawings done for Strand
Magazine when the stories first appeared, but they seem haphazardly
chosen and are not related to this text. We see, for example, a picture
of a man about to strike with a cleaver another man hanging onto the
outside of a window ledge. There is no caption or explanation.

This attractive and enjoyable volume is part of an ongoing series,
Quotable Books, which already includes another fictional character
(Alice of Wonderland) and will include subjects ranging from Mark Twain
and Charles Dickens to heavy metal.