Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!jagardner From: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Sherlock Holmes Stories Message-ID: <15569@watmath.UUCP> Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 10:31:01 EDT Article-I.D.: watmath.15569 Posted: Thu Jul 4 10:31:01 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 03:13:47 EDT References: <441@busch.UUCP> Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 20 In article <441@busch.UUCP> mte@busch.UUCP (Moshe Eliovson) writes: > While I realize Doyle wasn't a plagiarist I was grossly disappointed >when I read an Edgar Allen Poe story that was a forerunner of the detective >genre of stories of that period. The story was almost identical to a Sherlock >Holmes story except that the flow of logic, facts and setting had been changed. For those who like tracing these things down, check out "Zadig", a novella-length story by Voltaire (about 100 years before Poe). Zadig is a Babylonian nobleman who uses VERY Sherlockian chains of reasoning in one or two places. It gets him into trouble too. Example: he is out walking when armed men appear looking for a missing hunting dog. They ask if Zadig has seen the dog. Zadig (observing various marks on the trail) says something along the lines of, "So you're looking for an elderly female, who has recently had a litter of pups, has a bad right leg and drools quite a bit? Haven't seen her." I have seen Voltaire cited as the great-grandfather of the detective novel for precisely this reason. Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo