#MyrtleMondays: A Victorian Quilting Adventure

Posted January 4, 2021 & filed under Making, News.

Last week I promised you more Myrtle-related Making posts in 2021. As Miss Judson would say, no time like the present!

Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries #3, Cold-Blooded Myrtle, is coming your way October 5. In that book, we learn more about Myrtle’s mum, including the fact that she (like your Learned Author) was a needlewoman. A crazy quilt she made when Myrtle was little becomes a key piece of evidence in cracking an old mystery:

I nudged Peony out of the way to free the coverlet. It was a crazy-patch quilt Mum had pieced from scraps of our old clothes. Here was a bit of striped silk from her wedding dress, there a snippet of Father’s robes from law school. I could find what I was looking for in the dark, but I pulled it closer to the window and the streetlight outside. In a lopsided trapezoid of dark velvet was an embroidered dove, and Mum’s initials: JBH.

—Cold-Blooded Myrtle

Crazy quilting had its heyday in the last quarter of the 19th century, thanks in part to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Newly trading with the West, Japan sent art and artifacts to display at the Exposition, including pottery with traditional crackled (crazed) glazes.

Inside the Japanese Pavilion at the Centennial Exposition

Crazy quilting did not begin with the Expo, but the crazed glazes and beautiful textiles on display reignited the Victorian passion for imaginative shapes and exquisite ornamentation. Soon needlewomen in England, America and elsewhere were taking inspiration for their own work, reimagining the aesthetic and adding their own sensibilities to this celebration of asymmetrical design and embellishment. It became a truly Victorian artform that combined all the global influences of the day, and reflected the skills, artistry, and daily lives of the women who made them. Unlike traditional patchwork bed quilts, a utilitarian artform, these quilts were intended for display only—one might even remark, rather like the women themselves: accomplished and elegant, adorning the home with their grace and beauty. (Read more about middle class women and girls and their pursuits here.)

Crazy quilt on display at the Legler Barn Museum near Kansas City (I think that W in the center is actually an M)

Crazy quilts have been brewing in the back of my mind for some time. When we were in college, Husband CJ (then Boyfriend CJ) worked as an intern at the Iowa State University Museums, including the Farmhouse Museum, ISU’s oldest building. The Farmhouse has several Victorian crazy quilts in its collection, including this exquisite 1882 piece by midwestern needlewoman Lydia Carver Stark:

Gift of Margaret Johnson. In the Farm House Museum Collection, Farm House Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

More information about Stark’s quilt can be found here, along with a splendid essay by history professor Dr. Amy Bix on the history of crazy quilting.

CJ has been a fan of crazy quilts since his Farmhouse days and has been hinting at such a project for a very long time. But it does take a lifetime of sewing to build up enough scraps to produce one!

We saw this beautifully-preserved 1890 crazy quilt at the Kansas City Quilt Festival in 2019.

Well, those years, and the fabrics, have added up, and CJ and I are looking forward to celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this fall. What better way to observe this milestone than to commemorate the last two-and-a-half decades of sewing (and life) with one epic work of textile art?

Like Myrtle, I know each of these scraps by heart. There’s my very first cloak fabric, a scrap from my Mary Poppins costume, dresses I made for my nieces, the doublet I made for my late FIL…

It’s taken me some time to find my groove with this project, experimenting with various piecing methods, threads, stitches, and equipment. (One thing to be said for being a lifelong needlewoman: I already have all the stuff!) But I’ve found my rhythm now, and having a splendid time sewing and embellishing. My blocks are a combination of traditional foundation piecing (the scraps are sewn to a flannel background) and “improv piecing” (not a Victorian term! LOL), scraps sewn together to create the random shapes. The foundation fabric helps stabilize the various weights of the fabrics and supports the embroidery.

Was there ever a year more fitting for a crazy quilt than 2020?

Many favorite Victorian symbols found their way into the embroidery, such as spiderwebs, gloves, and fans, along with more personal motifs and signatures. The International Quilt Museum has more information on the global influences on crazy quilting. It’s fascinating stuff!

My third block, pieced and stitched on New Year’s Day, 2021, features an anchor–a nod to the Farmhouse quilt that started it all. (On a technical note, after trying several other options, I’ve found this inexpensive plastic embroidery hoop to be ideal for holding this project just tight enough to stitch on without crushing the fabrics or embroidery. The 8″ working area is easy to handle and plenty roomy for covering the seams.)

I’m really having fun seeing this piece evolve. I’ll be sure to keep you updated here periodically, and follow me on Instagram for more regular updates.

Stitch on! You’ll see more of Myrtle’s mum’s crazy quilt in Cold-Blooded Myrtle, October 5!

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#MyrtleMondays: Ringing in the New

Posted December 28, 2020 & filed under News.

Well, Dear Reader, we’re almost there: time to say farewell (or good riddance?) to 2020 and hello to 2021! New Year’s Day is my second favorite holiday (after Hallowe’en). I just love the brimming potential and possibility of the coming months, all the exciting new plans afoot! I’m hard at work on Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries Book 4, (coming 2022), right now, which also finds Myrtle in the brand new year of 1894. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next months bring her!

It’s still early days, but already 2021 is shaping up to be just as action-packed for Myrtle and her Learned Author as 2020 was. (With possibly less existential drama? Fingers crossed!) I am packing my calendar with Events, Engagements, and Dates of Note, and have a few highlights to preview for you.

First (well, not chronologically first) and most important, Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries Book 3, Cold-Blooded Myrtle, will be here before you know it—October 5! It seems like a long time now, but after the Dog Days of Summer, you’ll be ready for a Victorian Christmas mystery.

Remember this teaser from a couple of months ago?

I don’t have the details yet, but I can’t wait for our giant Book 3 Cover Reveal! There is a HUGE HUGE SURPRISE that I am dying to share with everyone. Stay tuned for that…

I already have several events confirmed for 2021:

January 27: Virtual School Visit with Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI

January 30: Virtual Historical Fiction Panel with Jeannie Mobley, J. Anderson Coats, Tracey Lee, and Elizabeth C. Bunce, Rocky Mountain SCBWI

May 15: Virtual appearance with the Gaithersburg (MD) Book Festival

Be sure to check my Events Page for updates on my schedule, and for information on how to book an appearance with me.

And, of course, I’ll keep bringing you fascinating glimpses into Myrtle’s world with my weekly #MyrtleMondays posts. I have so many topics I can’t wait to talk about—including several Making posts to share. Remember you can also follow our escapades on Facebook and Instagram.

What’s happening in your neck of the woods next year? Drop me a line and let me know what you’re looking forward to!

Happy New Year, all!

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#MyrtleMondays: A Sherlockian Christmas

Posted December 21, 2020 & filed under News.

Mystery fans, I have a Christmas treat for you today! In January, 1892, The Strand magazine published Arthur Conan Doyle’s one and only Sherlock Holmes story set at Christmastime.

“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is one of my own favorite Sherlock stories, featuring a twisty tale of jewel thieves, ill-fated Christmas dinners, and some of the best banter between Holmes and Watson in the Sherlockian canon. (There is some animal violence, as a goose meets a sad fate in the tale, so reader discretion is advised.)

Sidney Paget’s illustration sets the stage for the curious puzzle facing Holmes this Christmastide…

I have several ways for you to enjoy this tale, depending on your mood.

First, read the original story here, at the official Arthur Conan Doyle website (scroll down PAST the plot summary to where it says “text”).

Or you can listen to a delightful audio recording from LibriVox here.

Or if you have the BritBox streaming service, I highly recommend watching the 1984 BBC/Granada production starring Jeremy Brett.

So pour yourself a mug of eggnog, serve up a slice of plum pudding, and settle in to learn what happened when Christmas was coming and one particular goose was getting fat…

Happy Holidays!

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Myrtle Mondays: ‘Tis the Season to be Spooky-the ghost stories of a Victorian Christmas

Posted December 14, 2020 & filed under News.

The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story. …For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in English society as at present regulated. –Jerome K. Jerome, “Told After Supper,” 1891

It’s no secret that I love ghosts. In my considered opinion, a ghost can improve pretty much any story. For this reason (along with the whole dressing-up bit), Hallowe’en has always been my favorite holiday. But Victorian England had an entirely different holiday for telling ghost stories, and that holiday was… Christmas!

“Marley’s Ghost” by John Leech, 1843

Ho-ho-hooooooooooo! (Say that in a spooky voice.) Most of us only remember the Victorian Christmas ghosts of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), which helped kickstart the modern celebration of Christmas as we still know it today. But Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come were just part of a large and robust tradition that spanned the century and recalled the days (and people) of yore.

Tradition often links this to ancient pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice: on the longest night of the year, the boundary between the living and the dead is at its weakest, the most likely time for ghosts to come walking. That feels a little tenuous to my anthropologist’s brain, and the truth is, we just don’t know for sure how or why the Victorians came to associate Christmas with ghost stories, except that the tradition of grim tales in wintertime did stretch back centuries. Even Shakespeare noted it:

A Winter’s Tale, c. 1610

Dickens didn’t stop with Scrooge. The magazines he edited, Household Words and All the Year Round, included ghost stories—by Dickens himself as well as other authors—as regular features in their December editions.

The “Extra Christmas Number” of All the Year Round from 1859 included Charles Dickens’s story “The Haunted House”

You can read three of Dickens’s own Christmas ghost stories, including 1866’s wonderful railway tale “The Signal-Man” at this link.

Myrtle Hardcastle would enjoy our next story—it’s a legal one with a gruesome murder. A tale of ghostly jurisprudence, Algernon Blackwood’s “The Kit-Bag” was originally published in the December 1908 issue of Pall Mall Magazine. It concerns a young member of a defense attorney’s staff, the Christmas holidays, and justice from beyond the grave.

Even the frontispiece to Jerome’s collection is funny (and creepy).

Late in the century, humorist Jerome K. Jerome examined the entrenched tradition while giving it his signature comical spin in Told After Supper, his own collection of holiday ghost stories.

A magnificent horde of Christmas ghosts from Arthur Rackham’s 1915 illustrations for A Christmas Carol

So. If you find yourself getting to the end of a long (long, very long, exceptionally long) year and feeling restless or nostalgic or wishing that Hallowe’en was longer, why not resurrect (ahem) the grand old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve? Fa-la-la-ha-ha-ha-ha!

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#Myrtle Mondays: Myrtle in Translation

Posted December 7, 2020 & filed under News.

I am so excited to share the news that Premeditated Myrtle has been picked up for (so far) two foreign/translation editions: Russian and German. These are my very first foreign sales, so I am doubly doubly excited! (Quadruply excited? Excited squared?)

Here’s last week’s announcement from Publishers Marketplace:

Huge thanks to the fine folks at Rights People for making this possible. I’m thrilled to have Myrtle & Co. in the capable hands of Von Dem Knesebeck and The Five Quarters.

Peony in German is Pfingstrose!!

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#MyrtleMondays: Your Holiday Gift List

Posted November 30, 2020 & filed under News.

I’m known as the gift guru in our family (that’s an unofficial title). If anyone needs an idea for the perfect present for somebody, they come to me. This year, I’m sharing this superprowess with you, Dear Reader, should you find yourself in need of the Perfect Holiday Gift for the Victorian mystery fan (or, ahem, author…) on your list!

Even in the twenty-first century, we have strong associations with the Christmas season and the Victorian era, and no wonder—they redefined the holiday for the modern age. Book three of the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries, Cold-Blooded Myrtle, takes place at Christmas, but you won’t get to read that until October 2021. In the meantime, please consider supporting the bookstores who hosted launch events for Premeditated Myrtle and How to Get Away with Myrtle this fall. They may still have signed bookplates available when you order copies!

Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, TX

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, MA

Prairie Fox Books, Ottawa, IL

Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, KS

The Book Bungalow, St. George, UT

If all your friends and loved ones already have the first two Myrtle books (in hardcover, ebook, and rave-reviewed audio editions!), never fear! I have plenty more suggestions for how to stuff those stockings. I am not affiliated with any of the merchants listed below, but I have patronized them and know they would appreciate your business, as well.

For the Antique Lover

1901 Underwood sterescope, ecb’s collection

For the Victoriana fan, there’s nothing better than genuine 19th century artifacts. Thanks to the boom in mass production and consumer culture, many antiques have survived and are readily available on the secondary market—and depending on your interests, can be quite affordable.

Consider a stereoscope viewer and stereographs for the travel buff or Viewmaster fan. They can be found easily on ebay, along with hundreds of “Views” (images). See this post on stereographs for more information–and some views you can print off for your own device!

Nothing says Victorian home decor more than a crazy quilt. Early versions date from mid-century, but the crazy quilting craze swept the US and England after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Period quilts in good condition command high prices for their luxurious fabrics and exquisite embroidery.

Or if you just happen to have heaps of velvet, brocade, and satin lying about, you could make your own! (Probably not in time for this year’s holiday season, though.)

For the Old Soul

If real antiques aren’t in your budget or practical for your lifestyle, then allow me to introduce you to Victorian Trading Company, a local business here in my hometown that’s been providing reproductions and Victorian-inspired goods to the discerning customer since late last century. A prowl through their outlet shop on their rare Open House days is a treasure hunt, but for those who can’t make it here, their catalogue/website offers a world of period delights—everything from food, stationery, reproduction toys, luxurious clothing and accessories, home decor, books, and more.

I liked this scarf so much, I bought two!

For the Reader

Book lovers never get tired of getting books as gifts! Here are some of my own favorite recent mystery recommendations, for readers of all ages:

The prototype for all girl detectives to come, Violet Strange is an ideal heroine for the Edwardian age, and her debutante sleuthing makes for delightful and puzzling reads. (More of Green’s books are on my own wish list this year…HINT. Ahem.)

In the first of four middle-grade novels, a young Zora Neale Hurston and friend Carrie solve a paranormal mystery in 19th century Eatonville, Florida. Highly recommended for the kids on your list!

When my editor at Alqonquin Young Readers acquired the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries, she said they’d be perfect for the younger siblings of Jackaby fans—and then she sent me Will Ritter’s first ghostly Victorian mystery to prove her point. (Well played, Editor, well played.)

Oh, what Myrtle would have made of such a book! My friend Bridget Heos has compiled the perfect history of forensic science for young readers, from the earliest days of crime scene investigation, to up-to-the-minute modern techniques. Hand this one to Myrtle fans who want to know how far the science of criminology has come.

For the Anglophile

If you are stuck in the US and craving things like Really Good Tea, Christmas pudding, and Violet Flake, Brits USA in Lawrence, KS, is your answer.

And while you’re sipping your Really Good Tea and nibbling your custard tarts, you will want some English TV to watch. Streaming options for classic British series and films include Britbox and Acorn TV (available on most streaming platforms). I highly recommend “Campion” on Britbox, based on the novels of Margery Allingham and starring Peter Davison.

For the Less Fortunate

The Ghost of Christmas Present exhorts Scrooge not to turn away from Ignorance and Want, in Charles Green’s 1912 illustration for A Christmas Carol.

And lest we forget, giving to charity was a time-honored tradition near and dear to Victorian hearts. Many of our most well-known and respected organizations, like the Salvation Army (1865, London) and the ASPCA (1866, New York City), had their origins in the 19th century. Be sure to include your own favorite cause among those you remember this holiday season.

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#Myrtle Mondays: Premeditated Myrtle is a Best Book of the Year!

Posted November 23, 2020 & filed under News.

Well, of course *I* think so, but don’t just take my word for it! I’m so excited to share the news that Premeditated Myrtle has been named to several Best of 2020 lists, including Amazon’s Top 20 Children’s Books.

(There’s some more exciting Amazon news a’brewing, so stay tuned for that!)

Not to be outdone, IndieBound selected Premeditated Myrtle as a Fall IndieNext pick!

**BREAKING NEWS! THIS JUST IN:**

We’ve just learned this morning that BookPage has also named Premeditated Myrtle one of its Best Books of 2020, saying, “This series opener charmingly evokes the spirit of Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, if Harriet were a bit more inclined toward afternoon tea.”

Publisher’s Weekly includes it in their annual Holiday Gift Guide of children’s books, saying:

Channeling classic Victorian whodunits, Bunce’s detective series opener features a quirky, winning narrator and a lively secondary cast. Thanks to governess Miss Judson, 12-year-old Myrtle Hardcastle, who is middle-class and white, is training to become a Young Lady of Quality, but Myrtle tends to be anything but proper. She erects an observation point from which to chronicle neighborhood events, and when her elderly next-door neighbor, scornful Miss Wodehouse, doesn’t follow her routine one morning, Myrtle summons the constabulary. After the revelation of Miss Wodehouse’s death and the arrival of the elderly woman’s heretofore unknown relatives, Myrtle suspects she was murdered and enlists Miss Judson to solve the mystery. A generous, well-wrought relationship between governess and charge complements tightly plotted twists.

And Moms.com has named it one of their Best Children’s Books of 2020, calling it a “thrilling mystery” that’s “great for kids who have an interest in science.” Thanks, Moms!

I am so honored to be included in such a great class of fellow 2020 books! Thanks to all the readers and reviewers who’ve made Premeditated Myrtle one of their favorites.

Cheers,

One Response to “#Myrtle Mondays: Premeditated Myrtle is a Best Book of the Year!”

J. Hyde November 23rd, 2020

Wonderful news, congratulations!

Reply

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#MyrtleMondays: Riddle Me This…

Posted November 16, 2020 & filed under News.

This week is the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) virtual conference—an event I was originally scheduled to attend in person, to share the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries with educators from all over America. Of course, those plans have been rearranged a bit, so my appearance there will now be pre-recorded and hosted at the Algonquin Young Readers virtual booth. Visitors will have an opportunity to win a classroom set of Premeditated Myrtle by solving some authentic Victorian-era brainteasers!

I have been a lifelong brainteaser fan (probably no surprise). They were just as popular in the Victorian age. Merriam-Webster tells us that the word dates from 1850, but mind-bending puzzles have been with us since the dawn of civilization. Scholars have unearthed ancient Sumerian puzzles, and ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes is said to have been fond of creating them to stump his friends.

Archimedes puzzled over the ways in which the pieces of an ostomachion puzzle could be rearranged to form a square.

Now it’s your turn to match your wits against Victorian puzzlers. See how you do solving some of these favorite 19th century brainteasers! (Check your work against the answers at the end of the post.)

1.) Rebuses

Popular throughout history, rebus puzzles (from the Latin rebus, meaning things) hit a heyday in the early Victorian era. Words in the message are replaced by symbols or graphics (a yew tree for “you,” etc). People sent each other rebus letters, used them in greeting cards and invitations, and advertised their products with them.

This American escort card (a type of calling card) from 1865 features a charming and flirtatious rebus. Can you decode its message?

2.) Riddles

The Victorians also enjoyed riddles, and books like The Amusing Puzzle Book from the 1840s kept them well supplied with new material, like:

Without a bridle or a saddle,
across a thing I ride astraddle.
And those I ride, by help of me,
though almost blind, are made to see.
What am I?

And lest you think all Victorian amusements were highbrow and erudite, they were not above some real groaners, either. Check out these punny stumpers from Answers Magazine in the 1890s:

Answers: Britain’s National Weekly entertained (and advertised to) readers from the 1890s to the 1950s.

Q: How is a tube like a silly Dutchman?
A: One is a hollow cylinder, and the other is a silly Hollander

Q: Why are the waves at Margate like Mount Ararat?
A: Because they are crested there (the Ark rested there).

3. Wordgames were also popular (see this post about the parlor game Logomachy). Try your hand at this great anagram puzzle from 1897’s The Green Guess Book, by co-author Mary Watson.

Reprinted editions of this collection of 100+ original brainteasers are still available.

Why _____ you so?” she said.
“To see your _____,” quoth he.
“You mourn o’er market _____ whose head
Should toss as the ____ free.”
“The freest floweret droops its head
If choked by ____,” said she.

How did you do? Check out the answers below:

1.) May I see you home, my dear?

2.) Spectacles

3.) Stare, tears, rates, aster, tares

Teachers and librarians, hope to “CU” at NCTE this week!

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#MyrtleMondays: The Comforting Power of Murder Mysteries

Posted November 9, 2020 & filed under News.

Well, hasn’t this been a nerve-wracking week? The protracted election drama, coupled with record-setting coronavirus cases, put us all on edge. I remarked to a friend that thinking about murdering imaginary people has been remarkably cathartic…

I am far from the first mystery author (or reader!) to have that thought. In fact, the Golden Age of British Mysteries—the era that brought us the works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, and more—can be directly tied to the effects of the Great War (1914-1918) on the English psyche.

Millions of Britons across the empire answered the call to fight for king and country… and never came home.

As English people tried to make sense of the violence and destruction wrought during the war, they turned to a surprising source of comfort: murder mysteries.

Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920

We’ve talked about the evolution of the mystery genre here before. As the world changes, mysteries change with it. The sensation and violence of the mid-19th century penny dreadful gave way to the meticulous investigation of professional Victorian detectives and police investigators. The years between the world wars saw the reign of the amateur detective and the cozy mystery: one where all the violence occurs offstage, and the fascination is in the solving of a cleverly-devised puzzle.

The glory advertised in England’s recruitment posters could not stand up against the blistering horror of the realities of the war.

A war like the Great War had never been seen before, and Britons struggled to make sense of the incomprehensible carnage—countless senseless, random deaths on both sides. In contrast, the deaths in mystery novels make sense: murderers have clear motives, clues add up to a tidy explanation, and justice prevails. It resets the natural order of things.

Dorothy Sayers set one of her most famous mysteries in a women’s college at Oxford, recalling the changes that rocked many of England’s ancient institutions.

And the order of things had been thoroughly overset by the Great War. It was the violent end to the Victorian-Edwardian era, and much of its familiar social order was blown away as well. Gender roles, social classes, economics, and politics were all upended in one fell swoop. Mysteries helped readers navigate this new world, while reassuring them that somewhere—in fiction, at least—everything worked out exactly as it should.

Capitalizing on the huge popularity of cozy mysteries, Ngaio Marsh’s first novel takes place at a murder mystery party at an English country house–even in fiction, fictional people enjoyed mysteries in their leisure time!

So the next time someone in your household needs to recover from four straight days of CNN with a few hours of “Forensic Files,” have no fear. She’s not morbid—it’s a perfectly natural reaction to unsettling times!

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#MyrtleMondays: Dressing the Victorian Detective

Posted November 2, 2020 & filed under News.

Last week, I spent Halloween Eve (yes, All Hallow’s Eve Eve) with fellow Algonquin Young Readers authors Sarah Jean Horwitz (The Dark Lord Clementine and the Carmer & Grit series) and Will Ritter (Oddmire and Jackaby series)—at an event with Prairie Fox Books of Ottawa, Illinois. As it was Halloween, we swiftly decided costumes would be in order!

Naturally, I dressed as everyone’s second-favorite Victorian detective.

A deerstalker hat, caped coat, and magnifying glass are instantly recognizable as the accoutrements of Sherlock Holmes—so much so that they’ve been endlessly imitated for the last 130 years:

I rest my case.

Let’s break down this iconic ensemble and its history.

Holmes first appears in his signature deerstalker hat in 1891’s “Boscombe Valley Mystery,” in Sidney Paget’s illustration for The Strand:

The cap is an indication that they are headed to the countryside: the deerstalker is the headgear of rural sportsmen (hence the name), although it was not only for men or for hunting. A young cyclist wears hers with aplomb in this 1880s fashion plate:

Although never actually named by Doyle in the text, Holmes’s hat is described as a soft cap with ear flaps, and Sidney Paget (himself a deerstalker aficionado) went with the most common such hat of the day.

Artist Sidney Paget punting in his own deerstalker, c. 1900

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and artists like Sidney Paget and Frederic Dorr Steele, who illustrated the American editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories, were cognizant of the enormous and long-lasting popularity of the character. As stage and screen adaptations ran alongside the stories, they began to feed off each other, further cementing a single recognizable image for the famous detective.

American actor William Gillette played Sherlock Holmes on stage more than 1000 times (and in this silent film from 1916), and is said to have been Frederic Dorr Steele’s model for his depictions of the detective.

Steele’s illustration for a 1903 reprint of “The Adventure of the Final Problem”

Despite the rural origins of the deerstalker cap, it became so synonymous and inseparable from Holmes’s image that Paget himself depicted Holmes wearing it in the city in later stories (a departure from Holmes’s typical impeccably correct fashion sense).

Holmes can thank Doyle for his characteristic caped coat. The style was variously known as an Inverness cape or Ulster coat (or an Inverness coat or Ulster cape!), after two notoriously stormy locations, apparently, in which one would definitely want the double protection of both coat and cape. Popular from the early 1800s for men, women, and children, Holmes’s ulster graced his very first appearance, 1887’s A Study in Scarlet:

Artist David Henry Friston illustrated the first Sherlock Holmes story, including the Inverness cape right from the start. (Paget’s deerstalker came later.)

Notably, Watson also wears an ulster coat, as he tells us in several stories, including “The Blue Carbuncle,” although to distinguish him from his partner, he’s rarely if ever shown in one.

Holmes was at the cusp of fashion in this style—here’s a splendid women’s ensemble (with matching hat!) from around 1890:

See more detailed images of this fantastic ensemble at AntiqueDress.com

And an illustration from an 1880s American catalogue, for a girl’s version:

Might we see another Victorian detective of our acquaintance in such a garment? Hmmm….

As Holmes’s popularity in print, stage, screen, and radio grew, these elements of his costume came to represent the character himself, long after they passed out of everyday fashion. One of the most recognizable Sherlock Holmes actors of all time, Basil Rathbone played the detective in fourteen films in the 1930s and 1940s, many set in the early 20th century. Although the Victorian outerwear had long gone by the wayside, the most famous of Victorian detectives stayed resolute in his iconic wardrobe:

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes in a publicity shot featuring all the now-necessary elements of the costume

It has become impossible to separate Holmes from his deerstalker, so much so that even modern depictions include at least a nod to the famous costume: