"The single most influential book on me," writes Carl William
Thiel, "remains The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes. But I cannot name the 'most influential' book
without mentioning the one that led me to seek out Sherlock Holmes
in the first place. It was not the quaint Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce
movies of the 1940s that motivated me to purchase the Berkley
paperback edition (for sixty cents) of The Adventures in my local
bookstore on that long-ago day in 1974. Before I discovered the
literary Holmes, I was a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books.
The catalyst that propelled me into the Holmesian camp was a thesis
advanced by science-fiction author Philip José Farmer in a
'definitive' biography of the lord of the jungle called Tarzan Alive
(1972)."
Welcome to the Wold Newton universe! Thiel's essay has just been
made
available to Sherlockian.Net, and it is, to say the least, worth reading.
![[Sidney Paget exhibition in Barnet, North London, 2007-08]](http://www.sherlockian.net/graphics/barnet2007.jpg)
The web portal about the
Great Detective:
Sherlockian.Net