New books revisit Poe's 1849 night and Holmes' real-world doctors

Emily Ogden, a professor at the University of Virginia, has published a new book titled Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe. The work blends biography with personal reflection on how Poe’s writing continues to influence modern readers.

Ogden describes the book as a study of Poe and his followers who allow his work to guide them into dark subject matter. She notes that readers must be prepared to explore madness, loneliness, and pain. The text frames this exploration through a specific historical incident from 1849 involving Poe’s friend, Philadelphia engraver John Sartain.

According to Sartain’s diary, Poe arrived at his workshop in an agitated state and insisted they take a midnight walk to the Fairmount Water Works. On a platform above the Schuylkill River, Sartain kept Poe from jumping for several hours. Ogden uses this event to examine how Poe’s art emerged from such personal torments.

The book also addresses Poe’s invention of the detective story. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, acknowledged Poe as the father of the genre. Doyle wrote that Poe covered the limits of the detective tale so completely that he could not see how followers would find new ground.

Despite this assessment, Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887. He published the story partly to supplement his medical practice. Fifty-nine more tales followed, establishing Holmes and Dr. Watson as literary figures so believable that letters from clients still arrive at their fictional address at 221B Baker Street.

Lindsay Fitzharris, a medical historian, has released a new nonfiction book titled Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes. Fitzharris previously wrote The Facemaker about Harold Gillies, a plastic surgeon who served in World War I. Her new work focuses on two 19th-century doctors who influenced Doyle’s creation of the detective character.

The book profiles Joseph Bell, a surgeon at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary, and Henry Duncan Littlejohn, an early forensics expert. Doyle, a medical student at the infirmary, drew on his observations of these men. Bell, known as the demon of diagnosis, could determine a patient’s occupation by reading the scars on their hands.

Fitzharris details Bell’s investigative work with Littlejohn on various murder cases in Scotland. She states that their methods may have influenced the detective work of Sherlock Holmes. The book also provides short histories of toxicology, anesthesiology, and public health.