“I was suddenly struck by the difference between the character in [A Study in Scarlet] and that of the stage and screen. Here, Holmes was a young man in his 30s, human, gifted, of a philosophic and scholastic bent, but subject to fateful mistakes which stemmed from overeagerness and lack of experience.

In early stories like that one, Conan Doyle ‘had not yet grown tired of his character, who later became a literary monster for him. And, as literature,  the earlier stories are far better. But practically every stage and screen presentation of the detective is based on the later stories.”

- Sheldon Reynolds on what would become his Sherlock