Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887. Over the course of four novels and fifty six short stories Conan Doyle was able to create a character so vivid that no small number of people in his day came to believe that Sherlock Holmes was real. A recent british survey suggests that many people continue to think that Holmes is real. (Some also, incidentally, think that real persons such as Winston Churchill are fictitious)[1]

Beyond the details provided by Conan Doyle himself, the "life" of the world's most famous detective has been fleshed out by legions of fans taking up the "game" of Sherlock Holmes scholarship and a number of authors who have written their own Sherlock Holmes stories.