EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 8 © 2014 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

60 Sidney Paget David Stuart Davies reveals how a letter opened in error triggered the creation of one of the most celebrated visualisations of crime fiction the world has ever seen. Ask most people to describe Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective character Sherlock Holmes, and no doubt they will include in their description an Inverness cape and a deerstalker hat. These items of clothing have become an indelible part of the icon that is Holmes. Actors playing the part are expected to don them in order to appear authentic. Even the updated manifestation of the character, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC TV series Sherlock , is sometimes seen wearing a deerstalker and the long coat he wears, although modern, has all the flourish of an Inverness. And yet specifically the creator of this immortal character in his stories never mentioned these essential props. The nearest Doyle got to the deerstalker was most notably in ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ (1891), when he has Holmes wearing a “close-fitting cloth cap” and ‘The Adventure Of Silver Blaze’ (1892) in which he describes the detective’s ‘ear-flapped travelling cap’. An Inverness cape is not mentioned in any of the four novels and fifty-six stories featuring Sherlock Holmes that was penned by Doyle. The closest in style to this garment is the Ulster, a long loose overcoat, sometimes girded with ABOVE: Paget in his early thirties with the characteristic receding hairline that he shared with his brother Walter, who became the model for Sherlock Holmes. RIGHT: Original art of Holmes in the attire with which he is most usually associated. From ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, first published in The Strand magazine in December 1892. FACING PAGE: A scene from ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles; shows Paget’s art at it’s best, full of intense drama, powerful staging and enough atmosphere to cast it’s own smog over an Edwardian parlor. Courtesy of Christies