Conan Doyle said that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations. Michael Harrison argued in a 1971 article in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that the character was inspired by Wendell Scherer, a "consulting detective" in a murder case that allegedly received a great deal of newspaper attention in England in 1882.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in publication in 1887. As a brilliant London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning and inference to solve difficult cases. The protagonist of the novel graduated from Oxford, specializing in chemistry. He always smokes a pipe and plays the violin. The Sherlock Holmes detective agency officially opened in 1877. Initially on the Montag Street near the British Museum , later sharing a house on 221 B Baker Street with Dr.Watson. He is arguably the most famous fictional detective ever created, and is one of the best known and most universally recognizable literary characters in any genre.文献综述

It was pleasant to Dr. Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures. He looked round him at the scientific charts upon the wall, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin-case leaning in the corner, the coal scuttle, which contained of old the pipes and tobacco.

Holmes does have an ego that sometimes seems to border on arrogance; however, he has usually earned the right to such arrogance. He seems to enjoy baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. However, he is often quite content to allow the police to take the credit for his work, with Watson being the only one to broadcast his own role in the case (in The Adventure of the Naval Treaty, he remarks that of his last fifty-three cases, the police have had all the credit in forty-nine), although he enjoys receiving praise from personal friends and those who take a serious interest in his work. Holmes is generally quite fearless. He dispassionately surveys horrific, brutal crime scenes; he does not allow superstition (as in The Hound of the Baskervilles) or grotesque situations to make him afraid; and he intrepidly confronts violent murderers. He is generally unfazed by threats from his criminal enemies, and indeed Holmes himself remarks that it is the danger of his profession that has attracted him to it. On occasion Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them; however, these weapons are only used on five occasions. Besides a pistol, Holmes twice uses a riding crop as a weapon.