Holmes: Stories and Commentary

BOOK REVIEWS essential to emphasize the authorial function and responsibility in editing a collection held together only by the common (co-)authorship of the stories and concerned primarily with Hardy's creative process as exemplified in both original composition and revision." Dalziel's justification here is somewhat circular, however, since she also chose the original materials that dictated its traditional aim, "the production of 'ideal first editions,'" and the tautology reveals what is eminently clear throughout The Excluded and Colfaborative Stories: Dalziel is simply not interested in theoretical problematizations of the author—or, for that matter, of collaboration. For her, Thomas Hardy remains a person to be understood and explained, not—to borrow a term from McGann—"a critical and historical reconstruction" in which she is taking an active part. Dalziel's edition does not, in short, break new theoretical ground; nor does it actively consider the concerns of many post Greg-Bowersian editors. For the Hardy-centric reader, however —and such a reader, after all, is the targeted audience for this book—The Excluded and Cofaborative Stories stands as a model edition , a source that offers much new information and many new perspectives on the literary and biographical text we call Thomas Hardy." Kristin Brady University of Western Ontario Holmes: Stories and Commentary Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays. John A. Hodgson, ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1993. χ + 452 pp. Cloth $35.00 Paper $8.50 IN HIS INTRODUCTION to Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays, John A. Hodgson writes, "For much of this century, critical analysis of the Sherlock Holmes stories was almost exclusively the preserve of a cult of devotees," most of whom were interested in treating Holmes as an historical figure whose biographical details needed filling in. Fortunately, Hodgson continues, "in the last decade or so, that situation is changing: increasingly Doyle is being studied seriously both as a literary artist and as a representative of his culture, and a genuine critical discussion of the Holmes works is now underway." Hodgson's collection of fourteen stories and nine previously published critical essays is an important contribution to that discussion. The fourteen stories include "A Scandal in Bohemia," The Red-Headed 377 ELT 37:3 1994 League," "A Case of Identity," The Boscombe Valley Mystery," The Man with the Twisted Lip," "The Blue Carbuncle," "The Speckled Band," "Silver Blaze," "The Musgrave Ritual," The Final Problem," The Empty House," The Dancing Men," "Charles Augustus Milverton," and The Second Stain." As a preface to these stories, Hodgson has included chapters one and two of A Study in Scarlet. Moreover, each story is followed by a brief and helpful afterword which explains a significant detail or a narrative strategy from the story. Every reader, of course, will have his or her own list of "major stories" (in 1927 Conan Doyle himself drew up a "top twelve" list, and I regret the absence of The Cardboard Box" and The Devil's Foot"), but Hodgson's selections are both representative (for he includes both pre- and post-Reichenbach tales) and judicious (his selections include the most accomplished and complex pieces from the Canon). The nine critical essays are equally well-chosen. Contributors include Martin Priestman, Peter Brooks, Gian Paolo Caprettini, Alastair Fowler, Stephen Knight, Catherine Belsey, Rosemary Hennessy and Rajewsari Mohan, Audrey Jaffe, and Hodgson himself. Just as each story is followed by an afterword, each essay is prefaced by a short note which either situates the essay within the larger work from which it is drawn or summarizes the main thrust of the essay. As Hodgson points out in his introduction, these nine critical essays fall, though not exclusively, into one of two camps: those essays which examine the stories as detective fiction (which inquire "into the detective story's stress on and exposure of plot, into the detective's and the reader's mode of interpretation and how these relate to each other, into the structure, logic, and nature of detection itself") and those essays which examine "the stories more for their cultural and historical implications and resonances, attending especially to their subtexts of sexual, class, and political relationships." Moreover...