the Hound of the Baskervilles

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the Hound of the Baskervilles

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1DeusExLibris
Mar 25, 2007, 3:29 pm

Is this consideered cannon? I only ask because its about werewolves and the supernatural, when all the other stories are firmly grounded in the mundane. Given, its written by Doyle, but is that necessarily the only requirement for something to be cannon?

2waiting4morning
Mar 25, 2007, 3:44 pm

I would definately consider it canon. Doyle was drawing on the gothic novel traditon of his time where these old manor houses had skeletons in every closet. Instead of going that route, however, he gave that genre a twist in that the spooky, supernatural events are actually explainable.

3lilithcat
Modificato: Mar 25, 2007, 4:17 pm

Any Sherlock Holmes story by Doyle is part of the canon. (His non-Holmes work is not.) By the way, there are, in fact, no werewolves in The Hound of the Baskervilles nor anything of the (proven) supernatural.

4Hera
Mar 25, 2007, 4:31 pm

The Hound of the Baskervilles is, without doubt, my favourite short story EVER. It is fantastic and evocative.

5aluvalibri
Mar 26, 2007, 12:13 pm

I enjoyed all of his four novels, but then, what is NOT to enjoy in Sherlock Holmes??

6john257hopper
Mar 27, 2007, 9:01 am

How could a Sherlock Holmes story written by the character's creator be anything other than canon?

7EelKat
Modificato: Apr 26, 2007, 4:36 am

How could a Sherlock Holmes story written by the character's creator be anything other than canon?

I have to agree with this one... being a writer myself, I'd HATE it if anyone was to say something by me was not "cannon". I can't even believe this is a real question? I mean are you saying that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was writing fan-fic? How can it be fan fiction if the creator writes it? Doyle was the creator of Holmes not some mooning writer of fan fiction. sheesh!

On another note, Hound of the Baskervilles was the first Holmes story I ever read.

~~EK

8DeusExLibris
Apr 26, 2007, 5:16 am

I wasn't meaning fan-fiction perse, but more alternate reality. Of course, given my memory is faulty (haven't read ANY holmes in years) I guess the question is no longer an issue.

9Hera
Apr 26, 2007, 6:36 am

I think the Hound of the Baskervilles is my 'guilty pleasure'. If the weather's grim and I'm stuck indoors I am always delighted if a filmed version is on cable TV. I've seen every single version of the story, from Basil Rathbone upwards and adore it. The plot never ceases to baffle me - how ridiculous, given the times I've read it / seen it! - the landscape is gorgeous and the story is a total ripping yarn.

Rathbone aside, my favourite Holmes is Jeremy Brett - that version of the Baskervilles was brilliant and I've seen it countless times. Every time I read it, I am struck by how excellent the descriptive passages are and the sheer skill of Conan Doyle as a writer. The plotting is intricate but not forced, there are a few strokes of melodrama but - meh - that's the period.

10aluvalibri
Apr 26, 2007, 7:33 am

You know, last night, watching one of House episodes, I thought that Hugh Laurie would make an excellent Sherlock Holmes...

11Hera
Apr 26, 2007, 7:40 am

Aluvalibri, there are so many parallels between House and Holmes (even that, see?) that the British TV guide Radio Times ran an entire feature on the similarities.

Yes, House is another guilty pleasure, as is the original CSI and CSI NY. Detective stories are just a complete relaxation exercise for me. I love them!

12aluvalibri
Apr 26, 2007, 7:43 am

Quite interesting, Hera....

13Hera
Apr 26, 2007, 8:06 am

Don't get me started, I love stuff like this and it would be a huge diversion of the thread...

...what the hey.

In House, which colleague is Watson? Holmes has cocaine and opium, House has those painkillers. Both arrogant, both always right, both famous withiin their world, both incredibly skilled in forensics, both 'driven' and have no personal life to speak of and in the episode I watched on UK5 last week, both with a nemesis (House's hilarious but appaling treatment of the policeman with the thermometer, which was classic House has led to him being busted for having stolen painkillers in his pocket and driving while high, an excellent cliff-hanger). The Holmes stories are also episodic, plot-driven and contain an essential enigma. Oh dear, I have rattled on.

:D

14nickhoonaloon
Mag 31, 2007, 12:30 pm

I`m going to swim against the tide here and admit that I don`t much like `The Hound...`.

For my personal liking, Holmes is out of the picture for too long, the plot always seems a bit cluttered and confused, the role played by the hound in the legend is inconsistent - initially it seems to act as rescuer for the unfortunate woman, then is transformed into a sort of avenging hound from hell - and there is not much Holmesian deduction on display in the same way as the other stories.

On a related note - enough to make even me a tad jealous - I once met a man who has a first edition of the Hound ! An auction house valued his copy a few years ago at £1000, which I thought was a bit low - though I don`t know what condition it`s in.

Anyway, just thought I`d mention it.

15reading_fox
Giu 4, 2007, 10:09 am

Anyone here been out to the real Dartmoor, where it is based? Its a great wild place to be, and you can really feel the terror the peat bogs would inspire by night.

There are two different hounds - the legend of the hound and Stapleton's real hound, painted luminous green - presumably in those days that would be a radioactive tritium based paint?!

16DeusExLibris
Giu 4, 2007, 1:08 pm

Just an aside, completely OT. One of the guys involved in the creation of the House series (I think the creator of the series himself) has come out and said that House is directly based on Sherlock Holmes, none of the parallels are coincidence.

17aluvalibri
Giu 4, 2007, 7:28 pm

Yes, I had heard that too.

18waiting4morning
Giu 4, 2007, 7:59 pm

Dartmoor is in western England. If you get the neato software Google Earth, you can see it from space if you know what you're looking for. It's a big, round brownish area that kinda looks like a desert from far away. Never been there, unfortunately. I was in England last year, but we stayed mainly in central and north England.

19stringcat3
Giu 6, 2007, 1:16 pm

RE: House, MD. There's another thread in this group that discusses the parallels - quite interesting. I can't say I enjoy House. The episodes are so formulaic, and House doesn't really have much in the way of interesting knowledge beyond medicine. One of the best things about Holmes was that you never knew what he was going to come up with next.

20desultory
Giu 22, 2007, 8:28 am

I'm off to see a professional performance of The Hound tonight, in and around a ruined medieval castle that is famous (locally, at least) for (small fanfare) ... being haunted by a demonic dog!

(Gulp.)

No marshes nearby, thankfully.

21perodicticus
Giu 25, 2007, 3:21 am

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

22CommonReeda
Lug 17, 2007, 1:58 pm

To reading fox
We live in the Dartmoor National Park in Devon,UK. Until recently we thought Grimpen Mire was an exaggeration and that Fox Tor Mire, on which it is based, isn't that deep. Recently my husband was on one of the DNP's guided walks and the leader described how a 6ft man had fallen in and was up to his neck before they managed to pull him out! Doyle mixes and matches different parts of the moor and names , and does exaggerate some times, the walls of prehistoric huts are only about a foot high.
The moor is beautiful in its different moods and given that it is only about the size of London, is very wild. In our local churchyard there is a tomb with a legend about dogs from hell coming out of it which was visited by Conan Doyle, and the name of his coachman on that trip was Henry Baskerville!

23aluvalibri
Lug 19, 2007, 9:58 pm

CommonReeda, what a fascinating story!!!

24reading_fox
Lug 20, 2007, 5:04 am

I grew up in the SW and spent many weekends walking on Dartmoor, I often thought it would be a great place to live - a bit bleak in winter though?

I've suspected that the mires change a lot, after a dry spell they are relatively safe. After a prolonged wet spell even the tops of the hills are more boggy than one really wants to walk through.

It is a fascintating story about the church!

25CommonReeda
Ago 13, 2007, 1:42 pm

I've also discovered recently that some Victorian antiquarian 'rebuilt' at least one of those huts at Grimspound so Conan Doyle might have seen it with a roof on!

26mstrust
Modificato: Dic 16, 2008, 4:24 pm

I recently read The Hound... , my first Sherlock Holmes, and loved it. Not only the atmosphere and the mystery, but the well-developed characters. I'm hooked and now I'm reading A Study in Scarlet.

27Sherlockrocks2008
Dic 19, 2008, 11:09 am

I agree when it comes to detective stories as well as the CSI stuff.

28ellevee
Dic 19, 2008, 11:12 am

Anyone else watch the show 'House'? I'm sure everyone knows the character was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but I wanted to add that I was inordinately excited when, in one episode, they mentioned a woman named Irene Adler, as the 'woman who got away.'

29aluvalibri
Dic 19, 2008, 5:01 pm

Yes, ellevee. And you probably noticed that House lives at #221B, the initial of his last name is "H" (like Holmes), and his Dr. Watson is Wilson, also starting with a "W".

30ellevee
Dic 20, 2008, 8:57 am

Haha. Yes, I did, actually.

31larrymarak
Dic 26, 2012, 7:07 pm

Check out Hounds of Baskerville, a tale in the second season of Sherlock.

32Enodia
Dic 26, 2012, 7:40 pm

>28 ellevee: "Anyone else watch the show 'House'? I'm sure everyone knows the character was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but I wanted to add that I was inordinately excited when, in one episode, they mentioned a woman named Irene Adler, as the 'woman who got away.' "

i didn't know that until i read this post a number of years back. but i saw that same episode last night (it was a Christmas episode), and in it they also refer to a gift that has gone missing, which turns out to be a book on surgical practices by a certain Dr. Joseph Bell!

not so subtle after all.

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