The specific style of the illustrations, often unrealistic and bent on euphemizing violence, also contributes to this ambivalent celebration of crime fighting that only partly hides some distrust as to its success. This ambivalence between social conformism and a disquieting urge in Paget’s drawings appears for instance in the similitude between images of Holmes and images of Moriarty, his arch enemy, or through the stylized settings which suggest a lasting threat in the outside, non-domestic world. This essay argues that the illustrations provided for the serial publication of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-mainly by Sidney Paget-constitute a significant supplement that both illustrates common ideological prejudices of the nineteenth century and undermines any complete containment of evil and crime by the investigator.
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