Reviews for J. Wilbur Chapman: A Biography (1920)

The average rating for J. Wilbur Chapman: A Biography (1920) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-18 00:00:00 Declan Mc Gahey The most delightful thing about this book is the sheer glee the author seems to be taking in rolling around in his Holmesy geekery. That enthusiasm is enough to pull me through the slightly dull bits when he's recapping history just because he can, only loosely tied to the story he's crafted for Holmes. Definitely quasi-academic and not really curl-up-on-a-rainy-day sort of reading, but more than amusing enough to hold my attention in the fits and spurts I gave it.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-13 00:00:00 Jack Winover This is a very "rich" book; full of facts and details trying to create a complete life for Sherlock Holmes. As the author as biographer notes, there are 56 short stories and 4 longer ones as written by Watson (a couple penned by SH) and published through Conan Doyle. That's not much when you consider it spans a working life of more than 25 years. (Of course no pastiche, no matter how well-written is used as material for this book.) It is to fill in the blanks in both Holmes' ancestry and long life (he dies in 1929) that the author turns his energy and creativity to. To have produced this book required a considerable amount of research in to Victorian and post-Victorian England. Not merely to glean the "flavor" of the times and the people, but to get the facts about criminal, social, political and international events during the 80-odd years that the book covers in some depth. The author begins with historical facts about these elements (including education and English country life) and produces a book that tells us of Mycroft, Sherlock, Watson; how their lives ran, how they interacted, and how they influenced history. It's easy to tell that Mr. Rennison took this task to be a most serious one and wanted it to be taken seriously by SH fans. All-in-all, he has done an admirable job and this is a book that many readers will enjoy. I write all this because it is a very full book and a very serious one. It presents its "facts" with a straight face throughout just as Conan Doyle's tales purport to be real cases. For many people they will be perfectly satisfied with the end product of the author's labors. The book does succeed in being a comprehensive biography of the man, but I found a couple of problems. First off the book is very dry and second it is too short and I think these two issues are linked. The style of the book is; fact, fact, fact, inference, fact, inference, etcetera. The anecdotes that are included are meant to explain away some period of time. Seldom are they used to color the man. Because there has been so much written about Holmes and how every nuance of every story is tells us about the man, I suspect that the author wanted to hold to a neutral course as much as possible. He does present specific comments on certain major events in the detective's life (e.g. Irene Adler), but these are few. It only takes comparison with some of the great biographies of the last 20 years to see the differences. One of the key differences is the "richness" of the biography, which inevitably means making a book longer. Richness is accomplished in a couple of different way. First, by putting in both longer and more excerpts from published and unpublished materials. Second, by humanizing the story with more views (sources) and more commentary (or analysis). However, incorporating more material into the book could have made it merely a longer, dry book. Ultimately it is the author's style that determines the tone of the work. Perhaps I will look up another work by Mr. Rennison to see what his is. If you like inventive fiction (within certain hard constraints in this case) and have any affection for the Great Detective, then I do recommend this book. Perhaps you will agree with my opinion, perhaps you will think that it is an engaging (it is mostly) and perfectly lush description of his life and times. Not matter what I hope you will enjoy it.