One of the most significant Conan Doyle projects underway is
the Edinburgh University Press edition of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. A
multi-volume decade-long endeavour, the project aims to produce definitive
versions of the author’s major works, with scholarly introductions and
annotations. Back in November 2019, the project team hosted the ‘Conan Doyle
and London’ symposium at Senate House, which delved into the author’s
relationship with the city, mostly through his fiction. The team’s second conference
took place on 24-25 September 2020 on the theme of ‘Conan Doyle in Edinburgh,’ again
touching on the many varied aspects of Conan Doyle’s professional and personal
life, this time with a bent towards his formative years. This time a virtual conference,
the event attracted an international audience, and we are fortunate that all the
sessions were recorded so can now
review them at your leisure.
The first panel looked at ‘Conan Doyle, Disease and Medicine’
and was chaired by Christine Ferguson, who gave an enlightening talk on
The
Land of Mist at the 2019 conference. Andrew Glazzard, talking on ‘Strange
Pathological Possibilities: Conan Doyle’s Diseased Imagination,’ explored disease
as a metaphorical agent of change, both morally and scientifically, in
The Adventure
of the Dying Detective (1913),
The Poison Belt (1913),
Sir Nigel
(1906) and
The Land of Mist (1926) in which we discover Challenger’s
wife has died of influenza. Minna Vuohelainen discussed the medico-gothic
stories in
Round the Red Lamp (1894) and how, by using tropes from
gothic fiction to heighten the moment, Conan Doyle presents a reality that is more
horrific than the supernatural. Both speakers demonstrated the permeable boundary
between Conan Doyle’s lives as medic and author.
The gothic featured heavily in the
second panel which addressed ‘Conan Doyle in the Empire and Around the World.’ Jessica
R. Valdez’s ‘Conan Doyle and the American West’ explored the author’s use of
Eastern tropes in his depiction of the American West, suggesting that he harboured
an anxiety around the USA and its diffused power. Paul M. Chapman (yes, that
one!) spoke on ‘Anglo-Indian Gothic in Uncle Jeremy’s Household,’ in which he dissected
the sources and influences on the story, particularly the Thuggee cult, and the
inheritance owed by both
The Mystery of Cloomber (1888) and
The Sign
of Four (1890) to this often overlooked classic. The panel concluded with the
series editor, Douglas Kerr, talking on ‘Conan Doyle’s Desert Drama – the Fires
of Fate,’ the play adaptation of
The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898), which
was first performed in 1909. Kerr noted the significant variances from the original
tale, notably the greater focus on the inner and moral life of the protagonist,
as the role of providence shifted from the guiding force behind Empire to the
guiding force behind private lives. The post-panel discussion on Conan Doyle’s
attitudes to Eastern religions and Imperial Gothic is also worth seeing.
Panel three, ‘Spirits and
Monsters,’ took in two very engaging papers from early career researchers. Zeki
Salah’s ‘A Study in Spirits: ACD’s Linkage of Mormonism, Spiritualism, and the
Pursuit of Primitive Christianity during his Second Spiritualist Tour of America’
tested the notion that Conan Doyle’s spiritualism was an empirical scientific
solution to disenchantment with the modern age. Salah showed how Conan Doyle
drew a parallel between religious revelation and mediumship, while maintaining
a strongly anti-clerical view of religions more broadly. Josh Dodd’s ‘”Seeing
that which is visible to others”: Doyle, Fairies and Hellish Hounds’ played
with the apparent conflict between Conan Doyle as the creator of the ultimate rationalist
detective and as believer in fairies. Dodd’s argued that Conan Doyle’s interest
in fairies was deeply rooted and offered a reading of the Sherlock Holmes stories
that suggested the detective could be more accepting of the supernatural. The wide-ranging
discussion, facilitated by Douglas Kerr, touched on the association between
fairies and Celtic sensitivities, spiritualist belief in public and private,
and Conan Doyle’s work as both supernatural and realist in
The Hound of the
Baskervilles (1902).
The fourth panel explored the ‘Challenges for Science’ and
was chaired by Catherine Wynne. Gordon Bates’s ‘Fascinating Fictions of ACD –
Edinburgh and Gothic Mesmerism in John Barrington Cowles’ showed how, coupling
materialism with the Scottish school of philosophy, Edinburgh professors
explored medical hypnotism, mesmerism and somnambulism as emerging scientific
and pseudo-scientific fields. Kyle DeDecker argued that Conan Doyle’s gothic
tales show how his spiritualist beliefs evolved and tracked spiritualism as a
cultural force in ‘ACD’s spiritualism and the gothic.’ DeDecker’s reading of
The
Silver Mirror (1908) as Conan Doyle playing with the idea of reliable witnesses
to further his case for spiritualism was particularly interesting. Finally,
Christine D. Myers, speaking on ‘The Study of Footprints – Medical
Jurisprudence in 19thC Scotland,’ used lecture notes to show that the
diagnostic techniques attributed to Joseph Bell were present more widely in the
1850s and 1860s, and that Edinburgh University was ahead of others in forensic
investigations by Conan Doyle’s time as a student.
The first day closed with a presentation from Ann Treherne,
author of ‘Arthur and Me,’ who described how her own psychic experience led to
establish the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in the centre of Edinburgh. While a
departure from the content of the two-day programme, Treherne’s talk reminded us
of the influence that Conan Doyle continues to have in the spiritualist
movement to this day.
The Edinburgh Works took centre stage at the start of day
two for panel five on ‘Editing the New Critical Editions’ with contributing
editors Andrew Glazzard (The Case of Sherlock Holmes), Darryl Jones (Conan
Doyle - Gothic Tales), Jonathan Cranfield (Twentieth Century Victorian –
Conan Doyle and the Strand Magazine) and series editor, Douglas Kerr (Conan
Doyle: Writing, Profession and Practice). Kerr opened the session by noting
that no other modern writer can rival Conan Doyle for breadth of work, and his
writings now appear in university curricula within literary, cultural and
imperial discourses. The Edinburgh Works project is a mammoth one, with twenty
volumes anticipated. In creating the definitive texts, the editors have reviewed
multiple editions, noting significant changes in the closing sections of Memories
and Adventures (1924), contradictions in UK and US versions of The Noble
Batchelor, and wrestling with where to include The Adventure of the Cardboard
Box (1893). Darryl Jones spoke on the challenges of wrestling with the
Imperial rhetoric of The Green Flag (1900) and extending imaginative
sympathy to the author.
‘Conan Doyle and Cities’ was the focus of the sixth panel,
chaired by Jonathan Cranfield. Clare Clarke talked about a new project,
‘Situating Sherlock: Mapping Sherlock Holmes’s London in the Strand Magazine,’
which aims to produce a visualisation of locations mentioned in the stories. The
audience were able to advise of several existing initiatives, such as the
Sherlock Holmes Society of London Gazetteer, which could inform Clarke’s work.
Sara Hackenberg spoke on ‘Sherlock Holmes Asmodeus’s Kaleidoscope,’ and the notion
that, like de Guevera’s interpretation of the mythical Asmodeus, Holmes could
peer into hidden realities, drawing on the famous line from the opening of
A
Case of Identity (1891): “If we could fly out of that window hand in hand,
hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer
things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the
cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations,
and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its
conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.” Both
presentations explored Holmes’s near-omniscience in the capital.
Darryl Jones chaired the final panel on ‘Sherlock Holmes in
Time and Space.’ Catherine Wynne gave a fascinating, wide-ranging paper on Conan
Doyle’s work during the First World War including His Last Bow (1917)
and A Visit to Three Fronts (1916) and touching on his relationship with
Casement in ‘Un Un Soldat dans l’armee Anglaise” – Sherlock Holmes on the Home
Front.’ Ashlee Simon’s ‘Speed and Stasis: Stimulants, Paralytics, and Narrative
Velocity in The Sign of Four,’ provided a novel take on Sherlock
Holmes’s drug use in that Holmes’s drug use is driven by rationality and not
emotion, and contrasting this with other stimulants in the canon such as
curare. Finally, Annette Wren touched on many of the themes raised in the
‘Conan Doyle and Cities’ panel in her exploration of the Charlotte Holmes
novels in ‘Re-Visioning the Detective Flaneur: Sherlock Holmes to Charlotte
Holmes.’
The programme ended with a discussion of two pre-recorded
keynotes which were issued to attendees in advance. Nick Daly’s ‘Love and
Mormonism: The Origins of A Study in Scarlet,’ despite traversing well-trodden
ground, introduced several new perspectives on the influences on Conan Doyle,
notably from the works by E. M. Murdoch and A. K. Green, also published by
Ward, Lock and Co. Daly’s survey also took in Fanny Stenhouse’s A Lady’s
Life Among the Mormons (1872), the dime novels of the 1870s and 1880s, plus
several early films and plays that reflected the moral panic including The
Danites which played in Portsmouth in 1882.
In the second keynote, Owen Dudley Edwards explored Conan
Doyle’s close association with Edinburgh. A lecture of astonishing breadth and
erudition, Edwards took as his central theme Conan Doyle as scholar, beginning
with the author’s decision to go beyond the ordinary medical degree to obtain
an MD and how his scholarly training and outlook influenced his life and work.
Edwards noted the debt owed to many people – Scott and Macaulay, but also John
Hill Burton, William Burton, and a cast of characters from his youth – and how
these exerted often competing pressures on Conan Doyle’s identity as
illustrated within the poem, ‘The Inner Room’ (1897). Perhaps more than any
other speaker, Edwards’ firmly located Conan Doyle in Edinburgh, as the symposium
intended.
Those who were unable to attend will find all the recordings
available at
the project website. They are all well worth your time, with special
mention for Edwards’ keynote which displays a mastery of Conan Doyle’s life and
work that has yet to be surpassed. It should be noted that one of the great
joys of these conferences is the chat, frequently enlightening and often amusing,
which demonstrated ably how well-versed and engaged were the delegates. With
the range of topics, insights and scholarship on display at the conference –
from speakers and delegates - one can feel confident that Conan Doyle’s star is
once more on the ascendance and that something special will come from these new
Critical Editions of Conan Doyle’s major works.
Mark Jones
Links:
Project website
Event recordings
Conference itinerary
Conference abstracts and speaker biographies
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