The Authentic World of Sherlock Holmes: An Evocative Tour of Conan Doyle’s Victorian London

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his vivid scene-setting for the Sherlock Holmes stories, has probably done more to shape our image of late-19th-century London, England, than any other writer. His portrait of a huge, fog-bound, romantic, and sinister city at the peak of its imperial greatness remains, to this day, convincing and atmospheric. Holmes and Watson ranged far and wide across the metropolis, and Charles Viney retraces their footsteps in over 200 contemporary photographs of London, taken between 1879 and 1914. Each illustrates an event from one of the stories in ‘The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and its location is pinpointed on a Victorian street map of the city. ‘The Authentic World of Sherlock Holmes’ is a tribute to the authenticity of Conan Doyle’s descriptive writing, a record of a vanished world… and a reference and guidebook for all Holmes fans.