This sense of his reality sets these stories apart from other literature, and from the very beginning the illusion of his existence was powerful. On October 29, 1892, an article called “The Real Sherlock Holmes” by “Our Special Correspondent” appeared in the National Observer. It quoted Sherlock Holmes complaining about the way Conan Doyle had plagiarized Dr. Watson. Holmes also expressed indignation at Conan Doyle’s misrepresentations of some of his cases. He didn’t make any of those little mistakes Conan Doyle ascribes to him. The Strand Magazine, which published all the short stories, received letters wanting to know if Holmes were a real person. The magazine cagily replied that it had not made his personal acquaintance but would certainly call upon him if ever it needed a mystery investigated.

Even after it was well known that Holmes was a fictional creation, a curious phenomenon developed that has no other parallel in literature. It has become a good-humored convention for Holmes scholars to treat the stories as historical events and the protagonists as real figures. Conan Doyle is often referred to as the literary agent for Dr. John H. Watson. Several biographies have been written about Holmes, and the current residents of Baker Street still get mail addressed to him. In October 2002 the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain awarded an Honorary Fellowship to Sherlock Holmes, its first fictional inductee, on the hundredth anniversary of his coming out of retirement to solve the case of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

In addition to his own characteristics, Holmes is popular for other reasons. The plots and the atmospheres of the stories deserve no small credit for creating the Holmes appeal. Conan Doyle’s skill in vividly describing London has made countless readers feel they know the city. The inclusion of so many accurate details from daily life in the city—from train stations and schedules, concert series, real-life performers, streets and buildings they passed every day—gave contemporaneous readers a sense they might be reading an account from the newspapers. The inclusion of many real historical characters strengthens the sense that we are reading a personal memoir. The stories were also initially popular because of the novelty of the scientific method used by Holmes in solving his mysteries, something we can’t help but take for granted now.

Holmes profits enormously by having his exploits narrated by an admirer. Nearly as well known but much less appreciated, the good Dr. Watson provides not only a contrast as the Everyman to Holmes’s Superman, he also perfectly embodies the British man in the street. Conan Doyle himself has often been thought the model for Holmes’s friend and chronicler. Like Watson, Conan Doyle was a doctor. Also like Watson, who we learn was a rugby player in his youth, Conan Doyle was an avid footballer. He was also a boxer, cricket player, and golfer. He was an all-round sportsman, and like other sportsmen, then and now, he had an uncomplicated attitude toward the world. Conan Doyle was like Watson in another way that’s scarcely believable except for the testimony of people who knew him. According to Hesketh Pearson he was apparently as little likely to deduce something about you as Watson was. (Conan Doyle: His Life and Art, pp. 183-184).