Sherlock Book Review - Sherlock Holmes Study In Illustration Series

Sherlock Holmes Society of London

Following Mike Foy’s excellent reference tome on Holmesian characters [The Curious Book of Sherlock Holmes Characters] the subject of this first large volume in his new venture is the initial illustrators of the stories: Charles Doyle, David Friston, James Greig, Walter Paget, and, of course, Sidney Paget — as well as some whose names are unknown. For each there is a short biography, and then their illustrations, usually with the artist’s name, the title of the story, the publication in which it appeared and even details such as the page on which the image was presented. Look upon this book as an illustration catalogue: it is not going into depth about the images or their creators. Nearly all the images are one per page, hence the length of the book.

It is in obvious competition with The Complete Paget Portfolio by Nick Utechin (reviewed in the Winter 2018 Journal) which scores over it in some areas. Utechin’s enables us to compare some of the magazine illustrations with the original artwork, and his book is a lot more portable. However, Foy’s book presents more artists than just Paget. The concept is not original, but in this sphere so little is. If you have The Complete Paget Portfolio you may not want to fork out for this volume, but if, like me, you’re a completist, you probably will. The later volumes, featuring other artists, will be moving into territory where there is less competition. I look forward to their arrival.

 

You can see this book on the Sherlockian Author Profile - Mike Foy page.

The second book comes out in March and is currently on Kickstarter.