Two new books revisit the lives of Poe and the real-life models for Sherlock Holmes

Two new nonfiction books released this week examine the lives of Edgar Allan Poe and the real physicians who inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Emily Ogden, a professor at the University of Virginia, published Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe. The book combines biographical research with an exploration of how Poe's work has influenced readers and translators such as Charles Baudelaire. Ogden, who first encountered Poe's work while teaching at her alma mater, describes the project as a study of the author and his followers. She notes that readers often use Poe as a guide into the darker aspects of human experience, including madness, loneliness, and pain.

Ogden frames her narrative with an incident from 1849 involving Poe and his friend, Philadelphia engraver John Sartain. According to Sartain's diary, Poe visited his workshop in an agitated state and insisted on a midnight walk to the Fairmount Water Works. On a platform high above the Schuylkill River, Sartain kept Poe from jumping for several hours. The book uses this event to examine how Poe's personal torments shaped his literary output.

The second book, Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes, is written by medical historian Lindsay Fitzharris. It focuses on two doctors at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary: surgeon Joseph Bell and forensics expert Henry Duncan Littlejohn. These two men, along with a ballistics expert known as "Dr. Watson," served as the models for the characters created by Doyle. Doyle, who had studied medicine, cited Poe as the father of the detective tale, stating that Poe covered the genre's limits so completely that he saw little fresh ground for followers to claim.

Doyle began writing mystery stories to supplement his unprofitable medical practice. He published his first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887. Fifty-nine more tales followed, establishing Holmes and Watson as literary icons. Letters from clients seeking advice still arrive at 221B Baker Street today.

Fitzharris details Bell's investigative work, noting he was nicknamed "the demon of diagnosis" for his ability to identify patients' occupations by their hand scars. The book also covers Bell's collaboration with Littlejohn on various murder cases in Scotland, including the Jack the Ripper case. The text includes brief histories of toxicology, anesthesiology, and public health.

Poe died at age 40 under mysterious circumstances in 1849. He had been born in Boston in 1809 to actor parents and was taken in by the Allan family of Virginia around age 3. His legacy includes essays, poems, and the invention of the detective story.