Sherlock Holmes: The Basil Rathbone Collection

Sherlock Holmes, the Basil Rathbone Collection DVD Boxset is a collection of four Sherlock Holmes films as portrayed by the actor Basil Rathbone. The films are ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ (1939), ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ (1939), ‘The Woman in Green’ (1945) and ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1946).

The inspirations behind Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, a fictional private detective.

The first fictional detective is known as Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, who served as a prototype for many subsequent characters, including Sherlock Holmes.

A famous quote by Conan Doyle reads, “He founded a whole literature on Poe’s detective stories… Where was detective fiction until Poe came along and breathed new life into it?”

Conan Doyle also wrote his famous Sherlock Holmes stories during the peak of the popularity of Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq. Therefore, Holmes’s behaviour and speech mimicked Lecoq’s.

At the time Conan Doyle began writing Holmes, Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq was incredibly popular. As a consequence, Holmes often adopted some of Lecoq’s behaviours and speech.

In his novel, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes, and Watson discuss these literary precedents near the beginning after Watson first sees Holmes.

In response, Holmes states that he views Dupin as “very inferior” and Lecoq as an “awful bore”. To which Watson attempts to complement Holmes.

Doyle frequently mentioned that Joseph Bell was the inspiration behind Holmes. Meanwhile, Bell was a surgeon who operated at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary in 1877. He had worked for Bell as a clerk.

Despite this, he wrote to Conan Doyle later: “You are yourself, Sherlock Holmes. Well, you know it.” Like Holmes, Bell drew broad conclusions from small observations.

Furthermore, Sir Henry Littlejohn was also the inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes. Subsequently, Littlejohn was chair of medical law at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.

He provided Conan Doyle with a connection between medical investigation and crime detection. In addition to his role as Police Surgeon in Edinburgh, Littlejohn was also the Medical Officer of Health.