Sherlock Holmes fandom

Sherlock Holmes fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The fans are known as Sherlockians or Holmesians. Many fans of Sherlock Holmes participate in societies around the world, and engage in a variety of activities such as discussion, tourism, and collecting.

Fans of the literary detective Sherlock Holmes are widely considered to have comprised the first modern fandom, holding public demonstrations of mourning after Holmes was "killed off" in 1893, and creating some of the first fan fiction as early as about 1897 to 1902.

Fans often play the Sherlockian game, analyzing the stories under the premise that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were real people and Conan Doyle was merely Watson's literary agent. Many authors have authored "biographies" of Sherlock Holmes such as William S. Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962) and Nick Rennison's Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2005).

Various cookbooks with a Victorian era Sherlockian theme have been published over the years. 1976 brought both Dining with Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Cookbook by Julia Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt as well as Sherlock Holmes Cookbook by Sean M. Wright and John Farrell. The latter two authors have both received investitures in The Baker Street Irregulars. William Bonnell authored The Sherlock Holmes Victorian Cookbook in 1997.

Cosplay is often an aspect of Sherlockian fandom with a Sherlock Cosplay World Record attempted at UCL in 2014.

Elements of Sherlock Holmes fandom have been explored in non-fiction books such as the 2015 book The Great Detective by Zach Dundas, and the 2017 book From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Boström [sv].

Organisations have formed all over the world devoted to Sherlock Holmes. There are many Sherlock Holmes societies, though estimates of the number of groups vary; one source published in 1999 states that there are 375 such groups, another source published in 2001 estimates the number of societies is at least 250, and a different source published in 2009 states that there are more than 400 active Sherlock Holmes societies. In many of these groups, members often play the Sherlockian game, analyzing the stories under the premise that Holmes and Watson were real historical people. Members of these societies also participate in many other activities such as discussing adaptations of the stories and organising events.

Many Sherlock Holmes groups are based in geographical areas, though these groups often have an online presence. Some groups are based online, such as the longest established online Sherlock Holmes discussion group, the Hounds of the Internet mailing list, which has existed since 1992, and the John H Watson Society, a worldwide online society established in 2013, which was founded mainly by members of existing American Sherlock Holmes societies.