Sherlock Holmes: selected stories from an imposed chronology

I've just finished reading the Oxford Classics collection Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories, edited with an introduction by S.C. Roberts.
I figured this must be an old collection, and I was right - first published 1951. Most academics these days aren't fustian enough to adopt their initials instead of their first names - plus it only works if you have two or three first names. I just have the one, so I would look silly. Alas, I can only aspire to the heady heights of ancient historian and sometime TV presenter A.J.P. Taylor, for example.

I was going to call this collection a non-academic read, a collection for those who just want to read the stories and to hell with the bibliogrphical aparatus that goes with it. S.C. Roberts certainly gives us none of that, or any explanatory notes to interrupt the flow. But in 1951 this could have been where Holmes studies were focussing at the time. In his introduction, Roberts presents us with a chronology of Holmes, a life story of him as a real person. The selection of stories is given to us as a snapshot of Holmes' life and career, covering much of the salient points and times of importance. We don't get A Study In Scarlet, or The Final Problem, although we appreciate the resolution of them through the other stories. What we do get is as follows:
Silver Blaze, The Speckled Band, The Sign of Four, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Naval Treaty, The Blue Carbuncle, The Greek Interpreter, The Red-Headed League, The Empty House, The Missing Three-Quarter and His Last Bow.

It's a fair and varied selection which shows that the stories aren't just about solving crimes and riddles, and how life isn't always a struggle against wickedness and evil - as in The Missing Three-Quarter. Sometimes the stories are more about 'fleshing out' the characters of Holmes or Watson, and solving the crime is just a side-effect, as with The Empty House.

I have seen various attempts to inflict a definite chronology on the Holmes stories, despite Conan Doyle himself having no real regard for it. There is an in-built desire in fans and enthusiasts to do this and, let's face it, it's Conan Doyle's fault for creating two characters that have so successfully leapt off the page and taken the public imagination by storm. They have to be treated as real people and we want to follow their lives through from their first meeting to the end of their lives or careers. It doesn't matter that the stories don't fit a clear chronology, we'll make them fit!

This Selected Stories is an attempt at just that, in line with the biographical introduction. It works here - but that's because it's only a selection. If one read this book first, before attacking the main body of work I fear the reader would be disappointed at the lack of obvious order the stories take in their collections, and where the novels fit in. But if it didn't matter to Conan Doyle why should it matter to us? Why can't we just take the stories as they are, as we encounter them? Why do we have to create lists? I guess it's an off-shoot of being a fan, you read these things over and over and then you naturally try to piece together the jigsaw of the lives of Holmes and Watson - it's now an in-built obsession of an age seeking definition and audibility in everything we do. The age of the statistician and book-keeper, the age of the nerd.

Whilst I really enjoyed the collection, I have to treat the rationale behind it with some scepticism. I feel that sixty one years after S.C. Roberts set out with his agenda maybe his work itself needs editing, or at least contextualising, to remind the innocent reader (possibly lured in by the brilliance of the recent BBC TV series) that they should enjoy the stories as stories, and not try to impose a biographical regime on the brilliantly haphazard world of art..? Let the reader make up their own mind, and be guided by Doctor Watson, not Doctor S.C.Holarly-Theory.

That's my view, anyway!