As those who 'play the game' of Sherlockian studies know, it was Dr. Watson who wrote the stories which posterity has seen fit to attribute to Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was Dr. Watson's literary agent, and they had a long collaboration which only ended with Doyle's death in 1930. The table below records the bare bones of that collaboration -- the publication dates (month and year) of the sixty stories which passed from Dr. Watson's pen across Doyle's desk on their way to immortality. The table sets these dates opposite a few of the major events of Dr. Watson's long association with Sherlock Holmes that the stories record.
and Watson |
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| Meet | |||||||||||||
| Watson marries | |||||||||||||
(A) |
(E) |
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| Reichenbach | |||||||||||||
| Return | |||||||||||||
| Watson moves out | |||||||||||||
| Holmes retires | |||||||||||||
| Last collaboration | |||||||||||||
| Indicates active collaboration with Holmes. | |||||||||||||
| x's and ?'s indicate time of event in first column | |||||||||||||
| (A) = American publication; (E) = English publication | |||||||||||||
| 'Watson's Hiatus' marks the time when Watson was forbidden to publish by Sherlock Holmes | |||||||||||||