what do you think the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles depends on? - page 1
Keywords: Do you think the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles depends on the atmosphere that Conan Doyle creates or on the characters Holmes and Watson?
By Alec on 30/09/2008
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 1 of 3 pages: 1 2 3
The Hound of the Baskervilles was first published in 1902. It was the second book after Holmes was killed by his arch enemy Professor Moriarty (they both fell down a waterfall in Austria.) The Hound of the Baskervilles still remains arguably the most popular and intriguing cases put forward to Holmes and Watson. Conan Doyle dedicated most of his Holmes mysteries to Dr Joseph Bell, who taught him at Edinburgh University, it was he who Conan Doyle based his character of Holmes upon. But in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Conan Doyle works closely with Mr Fletcher Robinson who he met in Walsingham in Norfolk. It was he who took Conan Doyle down to Dartmoor and explained to Doyle the legend of the hound. Conan Doyle was particularly interested in this subject, and this was one of the reasons why he decided to write this book. The other was that after Conan Doyle tried to kill off Holmes, there was such public dismay that he was forced to bring him back. In the book The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of the Baskervilles was the next book to come after that. And was one of the most successful Conan Doyle ever wrote.
Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories over a 40-year period and they were based in the late Victorian era. This was an era of great social and technological change. It was all started when Charles Darwin wrote the book The Origin of the Species. This suggested that mankind was not just down to Gods’ creation but it was down to evolution. It suggested that the questions and mysteries of the world could be solved by science. It was an era of technological advance when scientists were inventing many new things, such as the light bulb, by Thomas Edison, the internal combustion engine and even the transatlantic cable. Therefore people were confident that science could be used in other methods, such as crime solving. In the same year as The Hound of the Baskervilles was first published in the Strand Magazine, the science of fingerprinting recognition was first being adopted in Scotland Yard. The method that Holmes used was based upon Dr Joseph Bell who taught Conan Doyle at Edinburgh University where Holmes studied medicine. Dr Joseph Bell used to be able to deduce what had happened to his patients by just looking at the mud on their boots, this
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