The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes ep07 The Problem of Thor Bridge

8 months ago
39

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the final set of twelve (out of a total of fifty-six) Sherlock Holmes short stories by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927.
Title of collection
The first British edition of the collection, published by John Murray, and the first American edition, published by George H. Doran Co., were both published in June 1927. However, they had slightly different titles. The title of the British collection was The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (hyphenated "Case-Book"), whereas the title of the American edition was The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes ("Case Book" as two words).
Further confusing the issue of the title, some later publishers released the collection under the title The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes ("Casebook" as a single word).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 4 novels about Sherlock Holmes. (1 - A Study in Scarlet, 2 - The Sign of The Four, 3 - The Hound of the Baskervilles, 4 - The Valley of Fear.
(2) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, (12 short stories) followed the novels.
(3) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, (11 stories) followed by
(4) The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 13 stories.
(5) His Last Bow, 8 stories followed by
(6) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, 12 stories and finally
(7) The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 10 stories by the BBC. All other Holmes stories would fall under this banner.
All will be uploaded here over the following week or two.

Copyright history and challenges
In the United States, two of the short stories from The Casebook, "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger" and "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place", were the last two Sherlock Holmes works by Doyle still protected by copyright. They entered the public domain on 1 January 2023, the year after the 95th anniversary of the stories' publication. The copyrights expired on 1 January 1981 in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. In the United Kingdom, its copyright was later revived in 1995, expiring again in 1 January 2001.

The Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. claimed they held the American copyrights. The company had a web page setting out its views about other claimants to those rights.

In 2013, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois handed down a ruling about copyright protection, not for the stories themselves, but for the characters of Holmes and Watson. The defendant in the case was Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. The plaintiff was well-known Sherlockian editor, and Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, Leslie S. Klinger. In the case of Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., the court ruled that the Holmes and Watson characters as described in the "story elements" that stem from most of the stories—those published before 1924—are in the public domain.

Literary significance and reception
Although some of the stories are comparable with Doyle's earlier work, this collection is often considered a lesser entry in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Kyle Freeman, author of the introduction to The Complete Sherlock Holmes, is particularly critical of "The Mazarin Stone" and "The Three Gables", stating that "almost nothing about either of "The Mazarin Stone" or "The Three Gables" has the true ring of Conan Doyle's style about them.

Loading comments...