Sherlock's Men

ELT 42 : 2 1999 compared and collated." There is no list of emendations and variants, and no indication whether versions appeared in America or pre-print materials survive. Such omissions suggest that serious textual work was not undertaken. But, perhaps Furbank and the editors of the Abinger Edition, an anonymous body mentioned in his introduction, have correctly, in the end, gauged their market. The dotting of i's, the counting of commas, the close attention to minutiae that a critical edition requires is apparently reserved for some remote future, perhaps on the lapse of Forster's copyrights, which the seventy-five year rule has recently extended to 2045. Until then the King's College stranglehold remains in place. How much of Forster's writing will be of interest half a century hence is a moot question, but it seems a long time to defer the prospect of professionally edited texts of most of his work. Unfortunately , one cannot say of Forster, as he himself begins an essay here on Housman, that he "has been well served by his executors." If indeed books have their fates, his have deserved better ones than the Abinger Edition has, with some honorable exceptions, dealt out. J. H. Stape ______________ Bangkok, Thailand Sherlock's Men Joseph A. Kestner. Sherlock's Men: Masculinity, Conan Doyle, and Cultural History. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1997. viii + 250 pp. $68.95 JOSEPH A. KESTNER begins his book by pointing out that in Scouting for Boys (1908), a manual written at least in part to help Scouts achieve the ideal of manliness, Robert Baden-Powell recommended the study of Sherlock Holmes and his methods. Following this suggestion, Kestner uses Doyle's Holmes stories to study concepts of manliness, or masculinity as he calls it. In the first chapter Kestner argues that masculinity is not an innate quality, the same for all men at all times, but a changeable construct, developed in response to events in any given culture . Thus a body of popular fiction published over a long period of time will reflect these changes. Doyle's 56 stories and four novels about Holmes were published during the 40 years between 1887 and 1927, a period marked by social upheaval in all areas of living. In his first chapter, Kestner gives a brief overview of this interesting approach to Doyle's work and provides a list of possible ways to look at masculinity in the Holmes stories: 212 BOOK REVIEWS ... male homosocial institutions such as the army, the Empire and the school; male friendships; male surveillance of other males; male spectacle; the idea of the gentleman; the relationship of logic to masculine identity; the ideology of chivalry; the differences of national masculinities (American, British, colonized ); male/male relationships (fathers/sons, brothers); domestic affiliations (stepfathers); ethnic, classist, or racialist inflections in culture (Germans, Irish, blacks); the imprinting of "games" or "sport" ideologies; the role of law and punishment; the policing of cultural institutions and practices; criminality as transgressive masculinity; the role of imperialism; the modeling of behaviours ; the commodification of women; the idea of comradeship; the question of race degeneration; international tensions; terrorism and male response ; and the idea of heroism. The remainder of the book is divided into three sections: "The Victorian Holmes," "The Edwardian Holmes" and "The Georgian Holmes." Kestner examines the stories published in each period and how they comment on the problems and crises faced by masculinity during that particular time. These problems often extended throughout the years covered by this study, but they manifested themselves differently during each era. Jack the Ripper is a specific Victorian example of "criminality as transgressive masculinity"; "international tensions" culminated in World War I during the Georgian period. Kestner presents the figures of Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson as two contrasting masculine paradigms. Watson is the normative male, watching Holmes's actions, often with hero worship. Holmes is the paragon with his superior logic, factuality, reasoning and daring, qualities gendered as male, especially in the late-Victorian period. If the intention of the detective in mystery fiction is to reestablish order, Holmes assumes additional duties—surveillance of, policing and, usually, restoring correct forms of masculine behavior. However, especially in...