Referring to himself as a " consulting detective " in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard. His popularity became widespread with the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine , beginning with " A Scandal in Bohemia " in ; additional tales appeared from then until , eventually totalling four novels and 56 short stories.
All but one [ a ] are set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras between and Most are narrated by the character of Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson , who usually accompanies Holmes during his investigations and often shares quarters with him at the address of B Baker Street , London, where many of the stories begin. Though not the first fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes is arguably the best-known. Avid readers of the Holmes stories helped create the modern practice of fandom.
Edgar Allan Poe 's C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction and served as the prototype for many later characters, including Holmes. Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it? Watson attempts to compliment Holmes by comparing him to Dupin, to which Holmes replies that he found Dupin to be "a very inferior fellow" and Lecoq to be "a miserable bungler".
Conan Doyle repeatedly said that Holmes was inspired by the real-life figure of Joseph Bell , a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh , whom Conan Doyle met in and had worked for as a clerk. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations.
Littlejohn, who was also Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health in Edinburgh, provided Conan Doyle with a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime. Other possible inspirations have been proposed, though never acknowledged by Doyle, such as Maximilien Heller , by French author Henry Cauvain. In this novel sixteen years before the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes , Henry Cauvain imagined a depressed, anti-social, opium-smoking polymath detective, operating in Paris.
