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Dr. John H. Watson is a fictional character, the sidekick of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional 19th century detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Various (extra-canonical) sources give Watson's birth date as August 7, 1852 and his full name as Dr. John Hamish Watson. A fictional character is any person who appears in a work of fiction. ...
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza unsuccessfully confront windmills. ...
Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes (1854–1957, according to William S. Baring-Gould) is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, created by British author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ...
Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centres upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ...
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859 – July 7, 1930) was a Scottish author of Irish descent most famously known for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction. ...
August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining. ...
1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...
Background and description
In the debut Holmes story A Study in Scarlet (published in 1887), Watson, as the narrator, describes meeting Holmes, their subsequent sharing of rooms at 221B Baker Street, his attempts to discover the profession of his taciturn companion, Holmes's eventual taking of Watson into his confidence, and the events surrounding their first case together. Watson describes Holmes and his methods in detail, but in too romantic and sentimental a manner for Holmes' taste. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the novel A Study In Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, in 1886 at the age of 27. ...
1887 is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar). ...
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887) 221B Baker Street is the fictional London residence of the detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Arthur Conan Doyle. ...
In The Sign of Four, Watson met Mary Morstan, who became his wife. Mary seemed somewhat less sure of her future husband, however, absent-mindedly calling him "James." Some have speculated that this is a wifely reference to Watson's unknown middle name, which could have been "Hamish." She repeats the nickname (or Doyle repeats the error) in The Man with the Twisted Lip. The Sign of Four (1890) was the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ...
Mary Morstan was the wife of fictional character Dr. John Watson, sidekick to fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. ...
The Man with the Twisted Lip, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ...
Watson is a medical man of some experience. He had served in the military in Afghanistan, having been discharged following an injury[1] received in the line of duty.
Personality Watson is not a stupid man (he is, after all, a medical doctor), but he does not have Holmes' insight. He serves as a foil to Holmes: the ordinary man against the brilliant, emotionally-detached analytical machine that Holmes can sometimes be. With the two, Conan created a clever literary pairing: two vivid characters, different in their function and yet each useful for his purposes.
Watson is well aware of both the limits of his abilities and Holmes' reliance on him:
- "[Holmes] was a man of habits... and I had become one of them... a comrade... upon whose nerve he could place some reliance... a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him... If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance."
Conan Doyle portrays Watson as a capable and brave individual, whom Holmes does not hesitate to call upon for both moral and physical assistance: "Quickly Watson, get your service revolver!" Watson occasionally attempts to solve crimes on his own, using Holmes's methods. For example, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson efficiently clears up several of the many mysteries confronting the pair, and Holmes praises him warmly for his zeal and intelligence. However, because he is not endowed with Holmes's almost-superhuman ability to focus on the essential details of the case, he meets with limited success in other cases, as Holmes remarks "Quite so... you see, but you do not observe." Watson is too guileless to be a proper detective; he is naturally open and straightforward, while Holmes is secretive and devious. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a crime novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, originally serialised in the Strand Magazine in 1901 and 1902, which is set largely on Dartmoor 1889. ...
Watson as archetype of the sidekick In Conan Doyle's early rough plot outlines, he intended that the role of Watson would be filled by two junior detectives known simply as Sandifer and Phillip; these characters became merged as "Watson." In turn, the introduction of Dr. Watson in the Holmes novels proved a precursor to other, similar characters. Many of the great fictional detectives have their Watson: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, for example, is accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings. In the words of William L De Andrea, Agatha Christie Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976), was a British crime fiction writer. ...
David Suchet as Poirot Hercule Poirot (pronounced ) is a fictional character, the primary detective of Agatha Christies novels. ...
- Watson also serves the important function of catalyst for Holmes's mental processes. [...] From the writer's point of view, Conan Doyle knew the importance of having someone to whom the detective can make enigmatic remarks, a consciousness that's privy to facts in the case without being in on the conclusions drawn from them until the proper time. Any character who performs these functions in a mystery story has come to be known as a "Watson."
In 1929, English crime writer and critic Ronald Knox stated as one of his rules for fledgling writers of detective fiction as that --1...
Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was an English theologian and crime writer. ...
- the stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader."
Cultural references Microsoft Corporation named a tool for debugging Microsoft Windows applications "Dr. Watson" (drwatson.exe, drwtsn32.exe). Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), (founded 1975), headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, is the worlds largest software company (with over 50,000 employees in various countries, as of May 2004). ...
Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware thus making it behave as expected. ...
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ...
Notes - ^ Watson gives two separate locations for the Jezail bullet wound he received whilst serving in the army. In A Study in Scarlet he states "I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery." However in The Sign of Four, Watson informs us "... [I] sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and though it did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather". The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor contains the only other reference to the injury. Here Watson is a little ambiguous; he tells us "the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence."
The Jezail is an Afghan matchlock or flintlock musket (an un-rifled long gun) fired from a forked rest. ...
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the novel A Study In Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, in 1886 at the age of 27. ...
The subclavian artery is a major artery of the upper thorax that mainly supplies blood to the head and arms. ...
The Sign of Four (1890) was the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ...
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the tenth of the twelve Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ...
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